


Children of GUN

by NetRaptor



Series: Sonic Boom's Angel Island [4]
Category: Sonic Boom (Cartoon)
Genre: Doomed Relationship, F/M, Genetically Engineered Beings, Mad Scientists, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-06 17:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12822120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NetRaptor/pseuds/NetRaptor
Summary: When Knuckles sets out to court Gladiolus, he doesn't tell her that her curse will only be broken if she marries him. But does their budding relationship stand any chance against her family, who hate Knuckles for his heritage, and Eggman, who is helping GUN collect their escaped experiments?





	1. Chapter 1

"Hey Sonic, let's take a walk," Knuckles said.

"Okay." Sonic raised an eyebrow, but put his cutting torch down and followed the burly echidna.

Three weeks had passed since Angel Island had rebuffed NME's attack. Since that time, everything had gone quiet. No Eggman. No water monster in the ocean around the island.

The island crew had rented tools on Bygone Island and set about cutting up the vast, burned hulk of the crashed airship Fellstorm. After one round of hauling scrap to the salvage yards to sell, they realized they had a gold mine on their hands. But it was hard work, and Sonic was glad to take a break.

"So, what's up?" Sonic said, falling into step beside his friend.

Knuckles was a head taller than the blue hedgehog, and twice as wide. He wasn't fat--only bigger and more heavily muscled from his hobby of weight training. He wore a frown, and as Sonic spoke, his expression lightened.

"Look what I found out here. I was clearing a path around the wreck, and look at this."

They rounded a tumble of ancient stone blocks, and came to a place where the trees grew in rows, despite the other trees and brush growing among them. Knuckles pulled down a branch and picked a lumpy green fruit. "It's a whole orchard of anon trees." He broke the fruit open and gave half to Sonic.

Sonic pulled out the white chunks inside and ate them. "Hey, I love these things. What is this place?"

"I don't know." Knuckles pushed aside a tangle of philodendron and indicated a smaller tree with orange fruit growing out of the truck. "There's some cacao mixed in here, too. But it's all overgrown."

"From the Ancients, before the Calamity?" Sonic said.

Knuckles nodded. "If we clean it up and take care of it, this is a ton of food. We could sell it, even."

"Dude," Sonic said, "between this and the salvage, we can live like kings." He ran his fingers over a cacao pod. "Mm, chocolate."

Knuckles leaned against an anon tree and folded his arms. "That's, uh, not actually what I brought you here to talk about."

Sonic picked another anon and fixed his attention on his friend. "Yeah, I knew something's been eating you. And probably not just the mosquitoes."

Knuckles grinned sheepishly. "It's that obvious, huh?"

Sonic pretended to think. "Let me see. You meet a pretty girl. You hit it off. She goes home. You've moped around ever since."

"Hey, I haven't moped," Knuckles exclaimed. He gestured at the orchard. "I've stayed busy."

"Busy in a really mopey way," Sonic replied, grinning.

Knuckles sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. So you've noticed."

"Go see her!" Sonic said. "We've got the island parked right now. You could take a boat if you wanted, since you still suck at chaos control."

"That's not the problem," Knuckles said, shifting his weight uneasily. "I've got a secret. Can you keep it?"

Sonic pointed at himself. "Hey Knux, it's me. I never spill secrets."

The echidna folded his arms and studied the ground for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Sonic waited. After years of friendship, he knew that although Knuckles's brain worked well, it worked slower than his own. Often the echidna feigned stupidity rather than stopping to think.

"Okay." Knuckles spread his hands. "You know how Gladiolus has that sickness in her eye?"

"Chaos eye," Sonic said. "Yeah, I think it's rare."

"You know she has two years to live?"

Sonic blinked, the smile fading from his face. "I didn't know that. Wow. That sucks." He patted Knuckles's shoulder. "I see why you've been so down."

Knuckles shook his head. "That's not why. It's not a disease--it's a curse."

"A curse," Sonic said flatly. "Didn't Shadow tell you that as a joke?"

Knuckles raised a hand. "Hear me out, okay? Way back during the Calamity, Chaos was forced to kill people he shouldn't have. In revenge, he put a blood curse on the king who made him do it."

Sonic made a face. "Chaos can do that?"

"He's a water monster," Knuckles said. "Water, blood, I imagine he can do all kinds of things. Anyway, if anybody under this curse touches chaos crystal, they gain power and it rots them away."

"So," Sonic said slowly, "that's why Glad can see chaos auras with that eye, but it's killing her?"

"Yeah."

They gazed at each other for a moment.

"That's your big secret?" Sonic said. "That she's cursed?"

"No," Knuckles said. He blushed and looked at the treetops. "To break the curse, I have to marry her."

"Whoa." Sonic stared at him for a second. A grin spread across his face. "Well, duh! Go do it!"

"You don't get it." Knuckles pantomimed speaking to someone else. "Pardon me, madam, but you can either marry me or die." He turned to Sonic. "That's not a choice!"

"Oh." Sonic scratched his head. "Ohhh. That's why you've been so mopey."

"Yeah, see?" Knuckles paced in a circle. "I like her. I think she likes me. But you don't just marry somebody you kind of like. And gosh, I can't tell her that it's to break her curse. She'll think I'm just being ... mercenary. Like I don't really care about her."

"She might be okay with it," Sonic said. "Just kind of warm her up to it."

"But how?" Knuckles threw his arms wide. "I don't know anything about girls or romance or--or anything!"

Sonic laughed. "You think I do? Knux, I've been dancing around that problem for years. I still can't even say anything to her."

It was Knuckles's turn to grin. "Who? Amy?"

Sonic nodded rather than say her name aloud.

Knuckles snorted. "She likes you, Sonic. Ask her out for coffee or something. _You_ don't have a time limit. And _you_ aren't trying to break a curse."

Sonic folded his arms and looked away, growing hot and uncomfortable inside, as he always did when he thought about the pink hedgehog.

Knuckles lifted his long dreadlocks off his neck for a moment. "So that's my big secret. Manipulation and lies."

"It's not manipulation if you really like her," Sonic said.

"Yeah it is," Knuckles said, letting go his dreadlocks with a sigh. "That's why I haven't told her. If she knows she has to marry me to live, then any time we spend together will feel ... weird. Like an arranged marriage or something."

"You have to tell her sometime," Sonic said. "Look at it this way. Say you guys date and fall for each other. Then you finally let it slip, oh yeah, marrying me will break your curse. And she'll suddenly think that all the dates and things were just leading her on because you had an agenda the whole time."

Knuckles hit himself in the forehead with a fist.

"Just tell her to start with," Sonic said. "Spin it in a positive way. 'Hey Glad, I found out how to break the curse. Turns out it's marriage. I'm an eligible bachelor, so how about it?'"

Knuckles rolled his eyes.

"Say, that's a good point," Sonic said. "Does she have to marry you, or could she marry anybody?"

Knuckles sighed. "I don't know. I had the idea that she has to marry an echidna who is outside the cursed bloodline."

"Great," Sonic said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Want to play matchmaker?"

Knuckles stood there for a long moment, his brow furrowed, one thumb on his chin. "I don't know if I want somebody else marrying her."

Sonic huffed. "Knux, stop being a waffle! If you want to marry her, do it! If you don't want to, then don't! She doesn't have to know."

Knuckles grimaced. "I already told her that we have to find the chaos crystal that put the curse on her."

"You freaking lied?" Sonic exclaimed.

"It wasn't a lie! Maria told me that if we find it, we might be able to use it to fix her chaos eye a bit."

Sonic leaned against a tree and folded his arms. "What else did you tell her?"

Knuckles crossed and uncrossed his arms, looking uncomfortable. "That there's a ritual we have to perform."

Sonic leaned his head against the tree. "Knux ..."

"It's true! A wedding is kind of a ritual, isn't it?"

Sonic began to laugh. "You're well on your way toward messing up everything!"

"Don't laugh," Knuckles said, embarrassed. "I _know_. That's why I told you this! I need help!"

"You sure do!" Sonic howled. He doubled over, holding his sides. Knuckles smiled a little in spite of himself.

When Sonic calmed down, he said, "Knux, just go talk to her, okay? Lay it all out. Let her decide."

"All right. It's what I should have done anyway." Knuckles pointed a finger at Sonic's nose. "And don't you tell a soul."

"On my honor," Sonic said, laying a hand on his heart.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Gladiolus was digging into a sandstone cliff with a shovel, hunting for scrap to salvage, when her headset crackled to life. "Glad?" Knuckles's voice said.

She straightened with a self-conscious smile, automatically pushing her long dreadlocks back from her face. She was an echidna, small for her age, dressed in worn clothes and boots for working hard all day. Her family scratched out a living by recovering scrap from the buried ruins of the Ancients all over Bygone Island.

She had gone to Angel Island purely by accident, catching a ride with Shadow and Maria during an emergency chaos control. There she had met Sonic, Tails, Amy, Sticks, and Knuckles, whom she sadly admitted to having a crush on. He had given her the headset as a way to keep in touch, but the range was limited, and she had to be on the beach opposite Angel Island to pick up anything at all.

She had worn it for three weeks, hoping to hear from anyone, but the island crew had gone silent. Glad's hopes dwindled. Maybe she had been kidding herself about being included, about being friends. And Knuckles ... she tried not to think about him at all. It had been a good experience, she told herself. She had learned a lot about herself and other people. But Knuckles seemed to have moved on, and so would she.

Until his voice crackled in her headset, bringing back all the awkward butterflies in her stomach in an instant.

"Hey, where are you?" he said. "I'm outside Pilings and I have no idea where anything is in this town."

"Oh, I'm working down by the cliffs," Glad replied, unable to hold back a wide smile. "Follow the beach south until it gets super rocky."

"Right. On my way."

Glad threw down her shovel and ran for the beach. Her diseased eye throbbed every time her feet hit the ground, but she didn't care. Her chaos eye, blind to real light, instead saw only chaos power, hidden behind its eyepatch. The world appeared as a grayish haze with bright points of light in it. As she reached the beach, her chaos eye picked out Knuckles in the distance. He appeared as a glowing green figure, the same brilliant green as the Master Emerald. A small green star glimmered in the knapsack over his shoulder-he'd brought the chaos emerald.

She stood there waiting for him, heart pounding a little too hard. Her good eye saw the blue sky overhead, the waves breaking on the shore, and a tiny dark figure in the distance. She mentally scolded herself. What had happened to moving on? Was she so desperate for a boyfriend that she would throw herself at the first male who looked at her? Good grief. She had two years to live. Probably less than that, now, since she had been exposed to oceans of chaos energy lately. The last thing she needed was to fall for some guy who would only be heartbroken when she died.

But she still stood there, her long, stiff dreadlocks swaying in the wind, waiting for Knuckles.

As he drew closer, he saw her and waved. Glad waved back, grinning like an idiot.

"You're way out here," he said as he reached her. "Whew! That was quite a hike."

"I have to work in places where the salvage rats won't notice," Glad replied. He was so easy to talk to! She'd forgotten that.

Knuckles studied her face, his smile becoming a good deal more tender. "I know it's been a while. How're you?"

"I'm all right." She pushed a stray dreadlock back toward the band that held them away from her face. "I kept waiting to hear from you."

He looked down. "Yeah. I'm sorry. I've just been ... you know."

"Busy?" she suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"Scared," he said with unexpected frankness.

Her heart gave an irrational leap. "Scared of what?"

Knuckles looked around, as if talking about this made him uncomfortable. "Let's work and I'll tell you."

Surprised, Glad led him to the little bay in the cliffs where she had been digging. She picked up her shovel. "I've only got this one."

He flexed one fist, showing off the spikes on his knuckles. "This is where I got my name." He walked to the cliff and punched it so hard that his fist left a cracked crater in the stone.

Glad gaped. "Wow. How do you keep from breaking your hands?"

Knuckles showed her the steel barbs under the layers of athletic tape. "Plus, I do this for fun. See?" He flexed one muscular arm.

Glad tried to hide a grin. "Okay then. Smash the wall for me and I'll clear away the rubble."

This turned out to be an efficient way to work, like having a small bulldozer. As she shoveled broken rock and sand, Glad said, "So, why were you scared?"

"Lots of reasons." Knuckles uncovered the end of a black steel beam. He studied it, then broke the wall around it to loosen it. "Terrible nightmares, for one."

"Oh. About Chaos?"

"Yeah. And Maria. And ... being shot again."

Those few words conveyed volumes to Gladiolus. She had seen Chaos rise out of the ocean and devour Knuckles in jaws of water. She had been there when Knuckles had been shot just below the right lung, then fallen down a stone staircase. She had heard Maria leaving with their enemies, turning her back on her friends who had saved her life.

"I've had nightmares, too," she said softly.

He gave her a quick look. "You have?"

"Yeah. About watching you die." Her throat suddenly thickened, and she couldn't say anymore. But it was always that moment when she found him curled on his side in the dark with a growing pool of red beneath him. In the dreams, she could do nothing but watch him struggle for breath, each wheeze coming slower and slower.

Knuckles nodded, brushing earth off one hand, then the other. "I'm sorry. I forgot you went through all the same crap I did."

"No," Gladiolus said. "Not the same crap. You didn't watch you bleeding out. And I was unconscious when Chaos took me. You're allowed to have nightmares."

He gave her a wry grin. "I guess I am. So, you know how it is. You don't sleep, then you sleep a lot, then you don't sleep. I lost track of time."

"I wish you'd tried to talk to me," Gladiolus said wistfully, scratching at the rock around the stone with the shovel. "I thought ... well. I've never had friends before. I guess I just thought none of you wanted me around anymore."

Knuckles groaned and sat on a rock. "There's something I need to explain."

Glad sat on a rock across from him. "What?"

She'd never seen him look so glum. "You remember how when Maria came back, she was all ghostly?"

"Yeah?"

"She's some kind of ascended being now. While she's crazy powerful, she's also really sensitive to chaos power. And your curse makes her sick."

"Oh no!" Glad covered her eyepatch with one hand. "I didn't realize! I'm so sorry!"

"It's not your fault," Knuckles reassured her. "But Maria can't tolerate your curse, so she can't have you around. And then I had to learn to chaos control to get out here."

Glad covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. "You didn't have Shadow teach you?"

"Pff, no, I'm not masochistic. Sonic taught me. I'm not terribly good yet."

Glad gazed at the way his shoulders slumped and tried to decide how she felt about being banished. Saddened, mostly. "So, I can't even visit?"

"No." He gave her an earnest look. "But if we could break your curse ..."

Glad sat up straight. "That's right! Mom and I went through her receipts for scrap we've sold. We found the chaos crystal sale. It was fourteen years ago, a five pound blue and white crystal, three thousand dollars."

Knuckles whistled. "That's a lot."

"Yeah." Glad pulled one of her stiff dreadlocks around her shoulders and twisted it in both hands. "So ... it was fourteen years ago. I don't know how we could even hope to track it down."

Knuckles considered, studying the end of the metal beam without seeing it. "I suppose we could start by talking to the crystal broker. Which one was it? I know the monkey and the bird ..."

"Ibis," Glad corrected. "No, it's the ocelot, Summer Shallot. She's supposed to swing through Pilings next week. She pays way better than the other two, but she only comes through twice a year."

Knuckles stood up. "Well then, we'll start with her. In the meantime, let's see how long this beam is."

As they wrestled with the old metal, Glad began to sense that Knuckles had wanted to talk to her about something else. He kept opening his mouth and looking at her, then shaking his head and going back to work.

"What?" she finally asked.

"Uh," he replied. "This metal is black. Did you notice?"

It didn't seem like the kind of thing he would hesitate to tell her, but she studied the metal anyway. "Maybe it's burned."

"I thought so too, but look." Knuckles scratched the metal with one barbed claw. Instead of shining silver underneath a black coating, the scratch was black, too.

"Oh!" Glad exclaimed, lighting up. "This must be hepatizon! It's an ancient form of bronze, super valuable. I've never seen any!"

"This looks like a support beam made of the stuff," Knuckles said. "Who would make a building out of valuable metal?"

"Depends on what the building was for," Glad said.

They went back to work with renewed vigor, happily chatting as they worked. Knuckles climbed up on top of the cliff and started digging down from above, which would prevent the sandstone from collapsing on their heads. Glad found herself happier than she'd ever been in her life. When she let slip that she studied physical fitness, the floodgates really opened. They talked about it for two solid hours-muscle groups, exercises, the weights they could lift, the particular exercises they hated the most, and so on. Knuckles lost the brooding attitude she had seen him wear for so long. Instead, he laughed and joked and his eyes sparkled. Glad made it her secret goal to make him laugh, or at least smile, every time they met.

Around noon, Glad said, "Want to come back to my house for lunch? I can introduce you to Mom."

"Sure." Knuckles looked around their diggings, then piled dirt over the black metal beam. "Don't want somebody spotting this while we're gone."

Glad helped him conceal it. He carried her bucket and shovel for her as they set off for Pilings.

"You don't have to do that," she said. "Besides, lugging my tools is part of my strength training."

"Consider this a vacation," Knuckles said, carrying her heavy bucket of scrap like it was full of feathers. "I'm sure this weighs as much as you."

"Almost," she said apologetically, but not sure why she was apologizing.

They circled a boulder on the beach, and Glad picked up a broken piece of a shell that had been deposited behind it. "Look, this was part of a Venus Comb! I have a whole one at home."

"You collect shells?" Knuckles said with interest.

She nodded. "Every so often, when we're hard up, I have to sell my collection and start over. But I always have a few rare ones that make it worth it. I actually found a harpa costata one time after a hurricane."

"What's that?"

"It's like the skeleton of a big snail shell. Orange and white. They're amazing looking." Glad looked down. "I don't have it anymore."

"Sheesh," Knuckles said. "Don't you keep anything? Chaos crystal, shells ..."

"You can't eat chaos crystal and shells," Glad said mildly.

Knuckles inclined his head. "Point."

They walked on, Glad vaguely amazed that Knuckles hadn't left yet. "I've never had somebody to talk to before."

"Why's that?" Knuckles said.

"Well ..." Glad reached up to touch a tamarind pod dangling almost within reach. "When I was little, I played with the other kids around town. But once I got chaos eye, nobody wanted to be around me anymore. I stopped being invited to birthday parties. Then one day I heard one of the moms telling her kids that if they touched anything I had touched, their eyes would rot like mine." She spoke lightly, trying to hide how much the words still stung.

Knuckles inhaled. "Harsh." The sparkle in his eyes changed to a hard glitter. Glad couldn't help but think that if he had been there, that mother might be missing a few teeth.

She patted his arm. "Don't worry about it. It was a long time ago."

"Doesn't make it any less cruel," Knuckles muttered.

Glad shrugged, brushing the memory away. "Anyway, it's so nice to have someone to talk to for a change. All I have are my mom and my aunt. Do you get along with your parents?"

"They died when I was little," Knuckles replied.

"Oh." Glad covered her mouth. "I'm sorry!"

He shrugged. "It's not so bad. This hedgehog family took me in. They had this bratty kid named Sonic." He grinned.

"So you two grew up like brothers?"

He shrugged. "Yeah. I was the one he always persuaded to try the dangerous stuff. 'Hey Knux, see if you can breathe under water with this bucket over your head. I'll watch from dry land.'"

Glad laughed.

Knuckles grinned. "Long story short. The bucket leaked."

They laughed about this all the way to Glad's house. Her aunt was still working, but her mother, Poppy, usually came home for lunch. Glad opened the door of their little shack and called, "Mom?"

"In here, Glad," Poppy called from the kitchen.

Glad stepped inside and beckoned to Knuckles. He had to duck to avoid the lintel. She hadn't realized how low their ceiling was until that moment. He was taller than she was, but he wasn't that tall.

"Is it okay if I invite a friend to lunch?" she called, suddenly aware of their shabby furniture, the rug with its unraveling edges, the table cluttered with dirty dishes.

"A friend?" Poppy said, worry evident in her voice. "I didn't know you had any frie-"

Poppy halted in the kitchen doorway, staring at Knuckles as if Glad had brought a hungry bear into the house. She was a thin, pale echidna with stringy dreadlocks, but she had just gotten a little paler.

Knuckles extended a hand. "Hey there. I'm Knuckles, from Bygone Village."

Poppy shook his hand very briefly. "Hello." Her eyes swept him from head to foot, lingering on the crescent on his chest. "So you're Glad's ... friend."

"Yeah, we met a few weeks ago," Knuckles said. "I was helping her dig scrap today."

Poppy's eyes flicked to Glad's. Glad frowned. She had always known her mother would react badly if she brought home a guy. She hadn't expected this ... terror, though.

Poppy forced a smile. "Have a seat. I was just making some sandwiches." She jerked her head at Glad, so Glad followed her into the kitchen. Knuckles pushed aside a stack of dishes and sat at the table, as if clutter was nothing new.

"Who is he?" Poppy hissed at Glad.

"A friend," Glad whispered back. "Be nice, Mom. He's been through a lot lately."

"Be nice!" Poppy whispered. "Don't you see that crescent on his chest? He's a moon echidna. Shifty, dirty people. They're not to be trusted!"

Glad vividly recalled Knuckles facing down Chaos, expecting to die, trying to keep the monster from taking her, too. Her mother's words were so unfair that she bristled. "He's the kindest person I've ever met! He can't help the color of his fur!"

Poppy huffed, slapping mustard onto a slice of bread. "You'd better not be romantically involved, young lady. I won't have any daughter of mine dating one of those-those-filthy creatures."

"Mom!" Glad whispered, aghast. She'd never seen her mother act like this toward anyone before. She glanced out the kitchen door at Knuckles, but he was gazing out the window as if he hadn't heard a word.

"We're not dating," she finished lamely.

"See that you don't," Poppy snapped. "Take him his lunch. I'm not sharing a table with a moon echidna."

Her face burning as scarlet as her fur, Glad carried two plates to the table and sat down. Her mother took her own lunch down the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door.

There was a long silence. Glad didn't dare look at Knuckles or she would burst into tears. So she sat there, knotting her fingers in her lap, counting to ten over and over.

"I don't think your mom likes me," Knuckles observed, calmly picking up his sandwich.

"You heard that?" Glad said, humiliated.

He shrugged. "Bits and pieces. What'd I do wrong?"

"She called you a moon echidna. I don't even know what that means." Glad stared at her sandwich. The last thing she wanted right now was food.

Knuckles gestured to the crescent on his chest. "This?"

Glad lifted both hands and shrugged. "I guess? I don't know! She's never acted like this before!"

"Huh." Knuckles gravely took a bite. "None of you have this marking?"

"No," Glad replied. "We have a little white patch instead. Mom always called it our sunburst." She pulled down the neck of her shirt to show a small white scrap of fur at the base of her throat.

"Sunburst," Knuckles muttered. "Solaris. Of course."

"Solaris?" Glad's eyes widened. "That king who Chaos cursed?"

Knuckles nodded. "You're descended from him. He must have had that mark. So, then, what are moon echidnas?"

"I guess we should find out," Glad said. "I hope we're not, like, enemies or something."

"Even if our ancestors were," Knuckles said, "it doesn't mean that we are."

Glad smiled a little for the first time. "You're so kind to me."

He smiled, too, as if she had somehow caught him off guard. "I think there's been a lack of kindness in your life."

Glad couldn't argue. She forced herself to eat her sandwich, cleaned up their few dishes, and headed back out into the warm afternoon with Knuckles. Her mother remained locked in the back bedroom.

The black metal beam turned out to be eight feet long. Knuckles and Glad finally broke it loose as the sun was setting behind the trees. It was so heavy that even Knuckles had trouble lifting it. But he obligingly dragged it back to her house and dropped it in her back yard, where Glad hid it under a tarp.

"Thank you," Glad said, the blue shades of twilight falling around them.

"You're welcome," Knuckles replied, rubbing his shoulder where the beam had rested. "You mind if I come back day after tomorrow?"

"Sure," Glad said, her heart leaping. "I thought ... you know, after what Mom said ..."

Knuckles touched her shoulder. "Glad. That doesn't matter to me. Does it matter to you?"

She glanced at the white crescent on his chest. "It's just fur."

He smiled. "I'll be back, then." He hesitated, as if about to say something else, then changed his mind. "Goodnight."

He walked away into the dusk, leaving Glad overjoyed and deeply embarrassed at the same time.


	3. Chapter 3

Eggman worked over a new robot on a rotating bench, a welding mask over his eyes as he brandished a torch. The machine lab resembled a garage, with lifts, huge clamps, and racks of every tool imaginable. It smelled of oil and hot metal. The robot on the bench didn't look like anything yet. He was still assembling the brain and engine, so it looked like the interior of a computer crossed with a motorcycle engine.

Eggman flicked off the torch and lifted the mask. He was a stout man, bald with a red mustache, currently wearing coveralls to protect his clothes. "Orbot!"

A red robot with a sphere for a head looked in to the lab. "Yes, Doctor?"

"Has any of that hepatizon I wanted showed up at the scrap markets yet?"

"No sign of any yet," Orbot replied. "Sometimes it takes a while for the scrap vendors to update their listings."

"Lazy animals," Eggman grumbled. "As soon as hepatizon appears, buy it. I don't care what condition, what price, whatever. Outbid other buyers of you have to."

"Sir," Orbot said hesitantly, his blue eye-lenses taking in the half-built machine on the table, "what is it for?"

"Don't you know anything about hepatizon?" Eggman said. "No, probably not, since I didn't give you wireless internet. It's impervious to chaos energy."

"And that's a good thing?" Orbot said nervously.

"A very good thing," Eggman said. "Now go buy me some."

Cubot, who had been watching the listings, yelled from down the hall, "Hepatizon! A whole thousand pounds of it!"

"Buy it," Eggman yelled.

There was a breathless several seconds. Then Cubot cheered, "Sold!"

Eggman did a victory fist-pump. "Get the carrier robots. This will take some doing to bring it home."

* * *

 

"Ramussan," Knuckles said, "what the ever-loving hell is a moon echidna?"

After a mostly-successful chaos control back to Angel Island (Knuckles ran into a wall upon landing), the echidna retrieved his headset from his box in the crew bunker. His friends' voices echoed from the galley, where they were having dinner. He would have a few minutes alone to talk to Angel Island's ancient AI.

He posed his question on a private channel, so his friends wouldn't listen in on their headsets.

Ramussan laughed. "I assume from the way you state it that this is an important question, sir?"

"I met Gladiolus's mother today," Knuckles said, flopping on his bunk with a sigh. "She hated my guts and called me a moon echidna. She all but forbade Glad to associate with me."

The AI was silent for a moment. "That's strange."

"Yeah. So what are they?"

"Moon echidna is the colloquial term for a descendant of Zenith, first Guardian of the Master Emerald. They all bear the crescent moon mark on their chest. I assume you have it?"

"Yeah," Knuckles said. "Born with it. So, are moon echidnas scumbags or something?"

"No," Ramussan said, drawing the word out into a question. "Angel Island's wizards all bore the crescent. It's the mark of the race of protectors. For someone to despise you for such a noble heritage ..."

"You have been locked up for a few centuries," Knuckles pointed out. "Maybe things changed."

"Maybe they did." Ramussan was quiet, thoughtful. "This is beyond the scope of my data banks. My records end at the Calamity, when my crew was lost. I knew nothing for years until Maria came along."

"Maybe my friends will know," Knuckles said. He heaved himself off the bunk with a groan. His muscles had begun to stiffen from digging all day, and especially from lifting that heavy metal beam. Glad must be in amazing shape to work like that every day.

He walked out of the crew bunker, cut through the main hall with its vaulted ceilings, sweeping staircases, and many doorways, and took the door leading to the galley.

The galley was a large room with an outdated kitchen, including a fireplace for cooking. A massive stone table stood at one end. His friends sat around this table, laughing and talking. It looked like Amy had made some kind of dinner salad-there were dishes lined up along the sink filled with ingredients.

"There's Knux!" Sonic exclaimed as he walked in. "How was your date with Glad?"

Knuckles rolled his stiff shoulders. "I helped her dig scrap all day."

Everyone exclaimed. Tails said, "That's how you know things are serious!"

Amy got up and approached him. "Ignore them," she murmured. "They've been wound up all evening." She pointed out the food and helped him find a bowl. Good ol' Amy, always looking out for people. Knuckles loaded up on everything and carried his bowl to the table.

Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Sticks were still eating. Shadow sat at the far end with a book, eating and ignoring everyone. Maria sat beside him, drinking only a glass of water and enjoying the company. She was completely solid tonight, without a hint of ghostliness. Her white dress and golden hair gleamed in the light from the crystals overhead.

Knuckles blinked at Maria. She felt like the Master Emerald, sitting there. If he closed his eyes, he felt only the gem's gentle chaos power flowing around him. He sat and ate, the tension slowly leaving his muscles. After the ugliness of being unexpectedly hated, it comforted him to sit with his friends who took his presence for granted.

"It'll take us twenty years to take this ship apart," Sonic was saying. "We finished pulling apart one segment today. One little segment, about ten feet wide and forty feet long. There's four hundred more segments!"

"I was crawling through the factory section today," Tails said. "Part of it melted to nothing, but some of it is storage for assembled robots. There's so many parts, you guys. Really quality stuff. I can repair the entire third floor!"

"Not without a rad suit, you don't," Amy said. "That chaos reactor is dangerous."

"I know," Tails said, rolling his eyes. "Ramussan will walk me through. He lives down there, you know."

"Lives?" Sonic said. "He's a computer."

"He has a core," Tails said. "He's part of the reactor system. He must draw a ton of power. I mean, think of how much like a person he is."

Knuckles let this conversation wash over him. It was easier than thinking or feeling.

After dinner, they cleaned up the dishes and everyone went off in different directions. Sonic, Tails, and Sticks started a card game under a video camera to try to allow Ramussan to play, too. Amy sat nearby with a sketchbook, planning the various redecoration projects she wanted to do around the palace. Shadow disappeared into the lower floors.

Knuckles, as usual, went to visit the Master Emerald.

He forced himself to walk through the set of huge doors and face the pyramid with the glowing gem on top. His skin crawled as he checked the anteroom for lurking assassins. Of course, there weren't any. He also forced himself to climb the pyramid steps, half-expecting a bullet to tear through him, knowing how hard the stone steps were if he fell down them again.

He reached the top of the pyramid and tiptoed around the Master Emerald until it was between him and the door. He stood behind it, leaning his elbows on the gem's polished top, gazing into its depths and seeking calm.

Yet it was too easy to remember how it had looked when the light inside the Master Emerald had died. It was like the inside of his mind was bruised and sore, and he kept finding more and more sore places.

"Hey Knux!"

Sonic burst through the doors.

The combination of sudden noise and movement sent Knuckles into a blind panic. He was conscious only of moving rapidly, trying to escape being shot again, his heart thundering. When he came to himself again, he was kneeling on the floor behind the pyramid, his feet and legs hurting from landing on the marble.

"Dude," Sonic said, peering around the corner of the pyramid. "Are you okay?"

Knuckles slowly stood up. "What just happened?"

"I must have startled you," Sonic said apologetically. "You jumped off the top of the pyramid. Like, just jumped. Wham. Are you okay?"

Knuckles shook his feet, one at a time. The impact still rattled in his shins. "I'm really tired. I just kind of psyched out there."

Sonic stepped closer, scrutinizing his face. "Man, Knux. It's been three weeks since all that happened."

Knuckles forced a smile. "Doesn't seem that long to me." He touched the faint scar under his fur where the wound had been.

Sonic saw the movement and his face shifted a little, as if he was trying to conceal his own pain. "Anyway. I came to ask how things went with Glad. You were going to tell her, right?"

A change of subject to another uncomfortable topic. Knuckles leaned against the pyramid's smooth side. "I couldn't quite spit it out."

Sonic leaned against the pyramid beside him, arms folded. "You were out there all day, man."

"I know, I know." Knuckles sighed. "I did try, really. I managed to tell her about how Maria can't have her around because of her curse. She was okay with it."

"She was?" Sonic glanced at him. "You sure?"

"Yeah." Knuckles recalled Glad's face, the sad look in her good eye, the way she tucked her chin to her chest and let her long dreadlocks fall around her like a curtain. "She was bummed out, but she was just happy that I was there."

Sonic grinned and shook his head. "She's too nice."

"Gosh, yes. I've never met anyone as nice as she is. And you know, people have been nasty to her all her life." Knuckles related the story of how people treated her after she contracted chaos eye.

Sonic's ears flattened and his spines bristled. "Wow. That's so not cool."

"Yeah." Knuckles studied the athletic tape on his hands, now dirty and torn, ready to be cut off and replaced in the morning. "I wish she was here right now. I don't think about being shot when she's around."

"So go propose!" Sonic said. "Get it over with."

"It's not time yet," Knuckles said. He fumbled for words to describe the delicate line he was trying to tread. "I can't just ... If I asked her now, it would be too soon. She'd get scared and turn me down. You know?"

Sonic heaved an aggravated sigh. "I know. It's annoying. You're so patient, and I'm not good at patience."

Knuckles socked his shoulder. "Maybe you should learn some."

Sonic grinned. "Patience would slow me down, man."

They stood there for a moment, leaning against the pyramid's angled side. Despite his innate impatience, Sonic seemed content to sit there as if waiting for something.

"Her mother hates me," Knuckles said suddenly.

"Ah, there it is," Sonic said. "I knew you were upset about something."

"Eggman's a jerk, but he doesn't hate us, you know?" Knuckles went on. "I mean, he's only attacking us with robots to make money."

"Which still bugs me," Sonic muttered. "He's making money off my awesome skills."

"Yeah, and this is different," Knuckles said. "Glad's mom said I was a moon echidna. She said I was filth and wouldn't even stay in the same room."

Sonic stared at him, wide-eyed. "Wow. That's ... extreme."

"Yeah." Knuckles gestured at the white crescent on his chest. "I asked Ramussan about this. He said I'm descended from this other family line that were protectors of the Master Emerald. They ran the Angel Island stuff. We weren't filth."

"That's scary," Sonic said. "I've never heard of that before. Do echidnas just hate other echidnas?"

"I guess?" Knuckles spread both hands. "Glad was shocked, too. She'd never heard her mom talk that way."

"I wonder if she'll try to break you up?" Sonic said. "I mean, if she hates you that much."

Knuckles rubbed his forehead. "Yeah. Probably."

"So," Sonic said, "I guess the question is, do you like Glad enough to fight for her?"

Knuckles considered this. Today had been a revelation of shared interests and happiness. In his heart of hearts, he already knew he wanted to marry her. Heck, he'd wanted it since she had argued with him about who should go to Chaos. But hearts were notoriously stupid that way.

"We need more time, I think," Knuckles said. "Just ... time to get to know each other."

Sonic nodded. "Do you love her?"

It was the first time either of them had said the L-word. It was a powerful word, heavy with respect and commitment.

"Let me get back to you on that," Knuckles replied. "I think so, but it doesn't happen overnight."

Sonic pushed off the pyramid's wall and stretched. "I'm beat. I think I'm headed to bed. I don't know how you muscle types cope with being this sore all the time."

"Never miss leg day," Knuckles replied, trying to hide a grin.

Sonic pointed at himself with both thumbs. "Do you know who I am? I never, ever miss leg day."

* * *

 

Late that night, Shadow crept into the Master Emerald's chamber.

Not being island crew, he couldn't operate the touch pad. But Knuckles had taken to leaving the door propped open with a rock, probably due to his newfound paranoia. It worked for Shadow.

The black hedgehog climbed the steps of the stone pyramid and stood facing the Master Emerald. But his attention was not on the gem. "Maria?"

She appeared in a shimmer of light, sitting on the Master Emerald's top as if she had been waiting for him. She slipped off the gem, smiling. "Hello, Shadow."

He took her hand, gazing into her blue eyes wistfully. "I miss the days when you were mortal."

Maria's smile widened. Life danced in her eyes-the life of the island's jungle, its leaves, insects, and animals, all swirling inside her. Her hand thrummed with it.

"It did have its benefits," she said. "And its drawbacks." She stroked the red stripe on top of his head. "You're troubled, love."

"Yeah." Shadow sat on the pyramid's top step. Maria sat beside him, folding her hands on her knees, her golden hair cascading over one shoulder.

Shadow hunched his shoulders and wondered where to start. "I've been thinking of joining their stupid crew."

"Good!" Maria exclaimed. "It will be so beneficial for you."

He looked at her sideways. "Shouldn't you join, too? Talk to the statue on Bygone?"

"I already have," Maria said dreamily. "He said there was nothing more he could do for me. I'm already bound to Angel Island through the Master Emerald."

"Oh." Shadow gazed at his folded hands, embarrassment making his red stripes glow. "I didn't know that. Did you get a title?"

"I am the Soul," she said, smiling.

"Not the heart?" Shadow said with a smirk that he never showed anyone else-a friendly, gentle sort of smirk.

"Oddly enough, no," Maria said, growing thoughtful. "Ramussan is the Heart."

Shadow snorted. "How does that work? He's a computer program."

"Oh no." Maria shook her head. "He's much more than that. Respect Ramussan, Shadow. He once saw the sun and breathed the air, the same as you and me."

Shadow's scorn vanished, replaced by creeping horror-the same he had felt when walking through the ruins of the lab in which he had been engineered. "How?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. He refuses to talk about it. I wonder, sometimes, if he even remembers."

Shadow contemplated this dreadful revelation in silence for a while. He had never paid much attention to the AI, except as a means to retrieve information. Once he joined the crew, he'd have to get to know Ramussan a little better.

"Yesterday," he said slowly, dragging his thoughts back to his original purpose for visiting, "I went home. I've been moving my things here, building a new apartment downstairs."

Maria nodded.

"And ..." Shadow hesitated. "I had a letter. From Lewis."

Maria shrank together like a frightened rabbit. "Lewis Gunther?"

"Yes. It was asking if I would I be interested in meeting with him."

"Shadow!" Maria cried in a whisper.

"I burned the letter," Shadow said. The red stripes on his head burned a brighter color as his temper flared to life. "How dare he contact me, after all these years."

They sat in silence for a moment. Maria drummed her fingers on one knee, as if counting. "He'd have to be at least eighty years old by now."

"He wasn't that old," Shadow muttered. "Seventy, maybe. They said he was the youngest man ever to achieve the head researcher position at our facility."

"Why contact you now?" Maria murmured, rocking back and forth.

Shadow shook his head. "We destroyed the Fellstorm and the leadership of NME. I imagine word gets around. You didn't remain a secret long, love."

She clenched her fists. "I'm not their experiment anymore, Shadow. I'm the ultimate life form, just as they desired. But it was the Master Emerald that made me this way. Not them and their needles."

Shadow nodded, wincing a little as power blazed off her, making his fur crackle with static. "If Lewis contacted me, who else would he go after? The other experiments?"

Maria's power ebbed as she considered this. "Are any of the others still alive?"

Shadow shook his head. "Most of them died within a few years. But some of them had children."

"Gladiolus," Maria whispered. "And ... my goodness, Shadow. Isn't everyone here descended from them?"

"A few," Shadow murmured. "Knuckles isn't."

Maria drew an unsteady breath. "No wonder I feel such kinship with Sonic and the rest." She gave Shadow a sharp look. "You knew this all along. Yet you treat them with such contempt?"

Shadow couldn't meet her eyes. He picked dust off his gloves, instead. "I was jealous."

Maria said nothing. When he sneaked a sideways look at her, her blue eyes were downcast, deeply saddened, almost grieving.

"I'm sorry, okay?" he snapped. "I'm working on forgiving them for being morons. They don't know their history. I don't think anyone does, except you and me."

"And Dr. Gunther," Maria murmured. "That evil man. I thought the scientists died in the breakout."

"Not all," Shadow said. "Some escaped without touching the wisps."

Maria bit her lip. "GUN lives on. You must warn Sonic and his companions, Shadow. Let them know they have an enemy more vicious than Tasha Hunter. A cold, logical enemy who only wants them for the secrets hidden in their blood."

The idea galled Shadow. He couldn't imagine helping Sonic that way, cooperating, acting like a friend. "I'll tell them when it's time. There's no reason yet."

"See that you do." Maria frowned. "Or I'll do it. But I can't speak to Gladiolus because of her curse. You'll have to do that."

Shadow shook his head. "Not while Knuckles is with her. None of this applies to him and he doesn't need to know."

"Of course he needs to know," Maria replied. "He's the Guardian. When you join the crew, you'll have to accept that."

"Which is why I haven't," Shadow growled. "I can't stand the thought of taking orders from that oaf."

"He's not an oaf," Maria said, her voice very quiet.

Shadow looked at her and saw the blue in her eyes crackled with his own dangerous red chaos power. He sat motionless, muscles tensed to flee. "Why do you like him so much? He's not a good leader."

"He's a protector," Maria said, her voice still a little too quiet. "Given time, he'll grow into leadership. I cannot have you undermining him, Shadow. I need both of you-my Wizard and my Guardian."

"You love him, too," Shadow said accusingly. "You've loved him since he pulled you out of the suspension tube."

"Yes," Maria said simply, the red fading from her eyes.

Shadow turned away and rested his elbows on his knees. Jealousy seethed within him, but for the first time, shame came with it. When Maria had broken him out of NME's magical binding, he had felt the depth of her love for him. Here he was, questioning it, hurting her, when he knew she loved him and always would.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment.

Her warm hand settled on his back, between his spines. "Shadow. My affection for you is based in my humanity. My affection for him is based in the Master Emerald. I am both, and I need you both. If I were to lose one of you, I would lose myself. Likely I would become like Perfect Chaos - one more monster roaming the world in search of rest it cannot find."

This made so much sense that Shadow relaxed for the first time. "So it's not a competition?"

"No," Maria reassured him. "It never was. I need all of you to work together. You are in danger from Dr. Gunther. All of you are."

"Except Knuckles," Shadow said bitterly. "He's the only one of us who wasn't tampered with."

"He is the last of his kind," Maria said, her eyes sad. "Dr. Gunther will want him, too. Do you realize what would happen if GUN got their hands on a child of Zenith? It was bad enough that they found the children of Solaris."

They both shuddered.

Shadow rose to his feet. "All right, love. I'll try to make peace. Here I thought our troubles were over with NME's defeat."

Maria shook her head. "Our troubles have only begun."


	4. Chapter 4

Glad crawled out of bed the next morning with the worst headache she'd ever had.

It had crept up on her all night, plaguing her sleep with nightmares of fleeing a rising tidal wave, of falling through breaking glass, the shards shattering around her forever. When she awoke, the headache had already spread from her eye, across the top of her head, and down to the base of her skull in a white-hot ribbon of pain.

She couldn't eat, and only drank a little water at breakfast. Her chaos eye wept red tears and her eyelids swelled. Even her usual eye drops barely helped.

"It was that moon echidna," her mother sniffed, bustling around her. "He worked you far too hard."

Glad wanted to argue, but it hurt too much. She sat on the sofa with her eyes closed, waiting for the headache to run its course. Eventually it would force her to throw up, then it would start abating. It was a good thing Knuckles wasn't coming to see her today. She'd be better by tomorrow.

"I already found a buyer for that hepatizon you dug up," Poppy said, sounding more pleased. "I priced it triple, and it sold in three seconds."

Glad smiled. "That's a lot of bills covered."

"Yes! And I can finally get the water heater fixed. The buyer is coming this morning with transport. He'll be here any minute."

Glad listened to Poppy's footsteps move from window to window. The front door opened, then closed. The engine of a truck rumbled to a halt outside, and voices spoke cheerfully.

Who had paid all that money for a beam of hepatizon? Curiously dragged Gladiolus off the sofa and to a window, where she forced her good eye open.

Outdoors it was cloudy, and the diffused light was brighter than ordinary sunlight. Her eyes tried to roll back in her head. Gritting her teeth, she forced her eye to see what was out there.

A rental truck was parked outside. Three robots were climbing out of the back, their bodies shaped like humans with crab claws. Two men stood talking to her mother. One of them had to be Dr. Eggman. He wore the same clothes she had seen in a news report once, and had the same mustache.

Dr. Eggman had bought the hepatizon? A slight shiver passed through her. Why did he want so much rare metal? He built robots that killed people. Was he working on some awful new invention that might kill her new friends on Angel Island?

As she pondered this, the second man, whose back had been to her, turned to watch the passing robots. He was an old man leaning on a cane, white hair frizzing around his ears. Thick spectacles enlarged his gray-blue eyes, but they were disconcertingly sharp and alert. He looked straight at her through the window.

Glad gazed back, trying not to show fear. What did this stranger see? An echidna girl with an eyepatch. Nothing special.

The robots retrieved the metal beam, carrying it between them, and loaded it into the truck. Eggman paid Poppy. The old man stared at Glad the whole time. Several times he turned toward the door, as if thinking of coming inside. Each time he changed his mind.

It was a relief when the two humans finally climbed into the car and drove away. Glad crept back to the couch and covered herself with a blanket again. She had seen Eggman for the first time ... so why had the stranger with him been inexplicably more terrifying?

* * *

 

"She was one of them," Lewis Gunther told Eggman.

"Eh?" Eggman replied, not really listening. He was guiding the truck down Pilings's narrow Main Street, aiming for a side road that would take him to where he had parked his airship.

"Project Shadow," Gunther said. "Not the one who sold you the metal. The other. In the house."

"I didn't notice," Eggman replied. "I was too busy scoring more hepatizon than I knew existed." He chuckled to himself.

"So we know of several, now," Gunther muttered, fiddling with the handle of his cane. It was silver and shaped like a condor's head. "The beasts you train your robots against, and that young female."

"How do you know?" Eggman said. "Plenty of Mobians around here with chaos affinity. Sonic and his rodent friends happen to have more than usual."

"Yes," Gunther replied, running his gnarled fingers through his white hair. "Why is that, do you think?"

Eggman shrugged. "I hadn't thought about it. You think Sonic is descended from these experiments of yours?"

"Yes," Gunther said. "And the genius fox. And the gifted pink hedgehog. And the badger. And now, that echidna female. I recognize the genetic traits we isolated."

"What about the other echidna, the one with the unusual strength?"

"Possible," Gunther replied. "I need access to your files on them. If I can collect enough samples for study, I can apply for a grant. Project Shadow will resume."

"You haven't said what's in it for me," Eggman said. "I just lost my biggest contract when NME sank all their assets into a hostile takeover."

"Is that what they're calling it, now?" Gunther said, raising one white eyebrow.

Eggman grinned. "That's what I'm calling it. In case you hadn't seen the news, they were destroyed by the mysterious weaponry on Angel Island. Nobody knows what it was. But I'm going to find out."

The truck pulled up beside a sleek, silvery hovercraft with a lower deck for hauling cargo. Eggman parked. "Climb aboard while I load the metal. Do you need help?"

Gunther stepped out of the truck with a little too much agility for a bent old man. "I can manage." He slowly stood up, straightening his bent back. Then he walked to the ship and climbed the ladder like a man forty years younger.

Eggman watched this dubiously. "Are you sure you worked on Project Shadow?"

"Yes," Gunther called down. "I have undergone cybernetic therapy many times throughout the years. I am older than I appear."

Eggman watched the robots carry the metal beam, frowning. Cybernetics weren't his area of expertise, but he had dabbled in the edges of the field. If Lewis Gunther was telling the truth, he was more machine than man. And he wanted to resume experimentation on living beings. While Eggman had few ethical considerations, he disliked working with living things. Machinery was so much more predictable. The thought of Sonic pinned to a table like a dissected frog made him queasy.

He would proceed with caution, indeed.

* * *

 

Knuckles missed Gladiolus.

He missed her the moment he woke up. He missed her at breakfast, as he ate with his friends and thought of things that would have made her laugh. He missed her as he cut metal off the wrecked Fellstorm and stacked it in piles. It was simply an ever-present sense that someone wasn't present who should have been. He looked for her everywhere without realizing he was doing it.

"Is something wrong?" Amy asked when they stopped for lunch.

The pink hedgehog had packed sandwiches and drinks in an ice chest and left it under a tree. As the sun neared noon and the humidity grew too stifling, they quit work and gathered in the shade.

Knuckles grabbed a bag of sandwiches and a water bottle, sprawled on the grass, and sighed. "Been working hard. Glad for a break."

"Oh," said Amy, nodding with a knowing expression. "Or just Glad."

Sonic snickered. Tails's ears pricked and his eyes widened. "Ooo. So is it official?"

"Is what official?" Knuckles said, his face growing warm. He swigged his water to hide his embarrassment.

"They're dating," Sticks said. "Either that or Knuckles was abducted by aliens yesterday."

"No," Knuckles said, rolling his eyes.

"No, it wasn't aliens?" Amy said. "Or no, you're not dating?"

"We're not dating," Knuckles said. "I told you, I helped her dig scrap."

"Did you kiss her?" Tails asked.

Knuckles threw a water bottle at him. "No!"

Sonic kept his mouth shut, but he was laughing behind the cover of his sandwich.

Amy said smugly, "It's pretty obvious you're crushing on her, Knux. Does she like you?"

"I-I don't know," Knuckles stammered. "I mean, I think so. We laughed a lot."

"That's a good sign, right?" Tails said, grinning. "Ooo, Knux and Glad, sitting in a tree ..."

"It's not, I mean," Knuckles floundered. "I'm only trying to help her break her curse."

Silence settled over the group.

"What curse?" Tails said.

Knuckles explained about the curse of chaos eye and where it came from. He left out the part about marriage, avoiding looking at Sonic. But Sonic kept his oath of secrecy and said nothing, although he never stopped grinning.

Tails, Amy and Sticks grew sober, though, when they heard about Glad's life expectancy.

"That's too bad," Tails said. "Glad seems so nice."

"Yeah," Knuckles said. "We're going to talk to the crystal dealer, see if she has records of where that crystal went."

"So," Amy said, "if this all works out, will you marry her?"

Knuckles crammed half his sandwich in his mouth to give himself time to think. He really did want to marry Glad, and bringing another person to the team would change their group dynamic. They deserved to know.

"Yes," he confessed. "I mean, if she'll have me."

Amy nodded, looking thoughtful. "You can't stay in the crew bunker, then. Ask Ramussan if the Guardian has special quarters."

This question had never crossed Knuckles's mind. Of course Glad couldn't stay in the crew bunker. It was all bunk beds. There were plenty of empty rooms on the other floors, though-surely some of them functioned as living spaces.

"I'll help you fix it up nice," Amy was saying. "I know the kind of flourishes girls like. Have you proposed yet?"

"Um, no," Knuckles said, hot embarrassment prickling all over him. "I haven't even asked her to date me."

Amy nodded, staring into space, obviously accepting this as a challenge. "If you take too long, I'll have a chat with her."

"I'm going to talk to Ramussan," Knuckles said hurriedly. He climbed to his feet and strode back toward the palace entrance, not quite running. Behind him, his friends broke into laughter.

It was a relief to plunge into the palace's welcoming coolness, the peace that radiated from the Master Emerald and filled the halls. Ramussan wouldn't laugh at him. Knuckles hunted for his headset and found it in the galley. "Hey, Ram."

"Hello, sir," Ramussan replied. "What may I do for you?"

"Does the Guardian have private quarters?"

"Yes, actually," the AI replied. "Every member of the crew has a deluxe apartment on the living level. I've been confused about why you've been staying in the servant's quarters."

"The servant's quarters!" Knuckles exclaimed. "So where are the real apartment spaces?"

"Upstairs."

Knuckles stepped into the main hall and looked around, baffled. "But ... this is the first floor. We've explored it. There's nowhere to live except the bunker."

"Sir," Ramussan said, sounding insulted, "the palace exists inside a mountain. You have well over a mile of rock above you. Your ancestors built their living quarters higher up, where the view is better. If you wish, I'll guide you to the secret staircase."

Knuckles cracked a grin. "A secret staircase? Now you're talking."

The secret staircase was hidden behind a carved wall panel beside the stairs to the Master Emerald chamber. Instead of a single gold panel to give it away, it had five small gold discs set in a circle, each the width of a fingertip. When Knuckles placed his fingers against them, the door swung inward.

The stone stairs beyond were thick with dust. A yellow crystal glowed in the wall halfway up, providing light. Knuckles ran up the steps, counting. At twenty-five, he arrived at a landing. A broad hallway stretched away to the right and left. Directly in front of him was a window set with old, ripply glass. It looked out through a four-foot-thick wall, west across Angel Island to Bygone in the blue distance.

"I like it better up here already," Knuckles said, admiring the view.

"The Guardian's chamber is to your left," Ramussan said. "At the far end of the hall. It is the largest, and, I am told, the quietest place in the palace."

Knuckles walked down the hall, passing stone doors at intervals. "Oh man, wait'll I tell the others where the really highbrow rooms are."

"Please do," Ramussan said. "I find it humiliating that my crew lives in such cramped spaces."

Knuckles reached the end of the hall and touched the plate on the door. It swung open into a room streaked with light and shadow. He stepped inside.

There were four adjoining rooms in the apartment, all of them bigger than his house on Bygone. The bathroom had actual running water from an old cistern in the corner, as well as a real toilet and a bathtub with four clawed feet.

The rooms had a scattering of furniture: here an old rug, there a chair standing by itself in a corner. The bedroom had a huge four-poster bed frame made of carved stone, but there were no mattresses or curtains. It looked like someone had moved out in a hurry, leaving behind scattered oddments. Ramussan had said that the Guardians had stopped the Calamity and lost their lives in the process. Maybe their families had fled. While the Ancients had faded after the Calamity, their descendants lived on.

Knuckles touched the white crescent on his chest. He was a moon echidna, the race of Guardians. Gladiolus was of the race of Solaris, which essentially meant the sun. The sun and the moon, ever chasing each other through the sky and seldom meeting.

That was a depressing thought. No, he had to plan for success in this particular venture. After all, she'd need a decent place to live. That house of hers ... Knuckles tried to formulate a description that didn't contain words like 'run-down shack' and 'extreme poverty'. When she married him, he'd make sure she lived like a queen. No more scraping for basic necessities like food, the poor girl.

If she didn't turn him down flat. If the curse didn't kill her before he spoke up.

Ramussan, who had maintained a respectful silence up to this point, said in his headset, "Considering starting a family, Guardian?"

"Considering it," Knuckles said, circulating through the rooms again and looking out the windows. They all faced west and were overgrown by bushes and vines on the outside.

"The Gladiolus girl?" Ramussan said, sounding interested.

"Yeah."

"Ah. I wondered at your decision to introduce her to me, when she's not crew."

"Hm." That was a good point. "How does Angel Island handle, you know, spouses?"

"That's up to the Speaker," Ramussan replied. "Sometimes he makes them crew. Other times he merely gives them permission to access island systems."

"Isn't that a security risk?" Knuckles said. "I mean, the Speaker is on Bygone Island. What if enemies got themselves hired as crew and came and killed us all?"

"The Speaker analyzes the psychic profile of a subject," Ramussan replied. "He remembers all current crew and the new subject must match the profiles he has built. The more crew there are, the harder it is for him to assign more. The variables become too complex. No enemies have ever infiltrated Angel Island in that way."

Knuckles nodded, resting his elbows on a windowsill. "I wish I knew more about girls. I don't know how to ... you know." He made air quotes with two fingers. "Win her affection."

Ramussan made a sound like a long sigh. "I can't help you there, Guardian. I have no personal experience. But from what I've observed, kindness and friendship must be in place before love is possible."

Knuckles nodded. "That's the only thing that makes sense. I don't want to hurt her. Fith, if I hurt her, I'd ... I'd kill myself."

"Don't kill yourself," Ramussan said dryly. "I haven't recovered from the last time you tried it."

"For the record, that wasn't suicide," Knuckles said. "That was making restitution."

"Yes, I know." Ramussan sighed again. "You Guardians and your protective instincts. I cannot help but love each one of you. I am the Heart of Angel Island. Each time one of you dies, I am broken."

Knuckles stood there, watching the sun creep toward the horizon. "Is that a metaphor?"

"What?"

"You being the heart of the island."

"I wish it was," Ramussan said sadly. "After the Calamity, when I lost my entire crew, I went mad with grief. I am the reason their families fled. I drove them out. I drowned my grief in loneliness for three centuries. I developed a hobby of killing intruders and treasure hunters. It was my only amusement. Then ... then Maria came."

Knuckles listened, touched. Ramussan must be far more than an Ancient AI, if he was capable of love, loyalty and grief. "Why didn't you kill the people who brought Maria in?"

"I was damaged," Ramussan said. "I couldn't hear the top two floors, and only scatterings of the bottom three. The humans cunningly kept to my dead areas. I knew they were here, but I couldn't kill them, as I wanted to. Then Maria spoke to me, and I forgot everything else."

"I'll bet you were mean," Knuckles said with a smirk.

"You have no idea," Ramussan said, sounding embarrassed. "But she was mean right back. My, that girl has spunk. We were two voices with no power to harm each other, so we battled with wits instead. It's probably why she survived. She was too busy fighting with me to die."

"Good for her," Knuckles laughed. "Let me guess. It was good for you, too."

"It was," Ramussan said. "After the first few months, we grew tired of fighting and started talking. Fifty years we talked. You can work through a lot of grief in fifty years."

"Interesting," Knuckles said. "So, was it you who called to me through the chaos emerald?"

"No," Ramussan said. "It wasn't Maria, either. I believe it was the Master Emerald, itself. As a descendent of Zenith, you are open to its call."

Knuckles pondered this. The story had made him awfully, painfully sorry for Ramussan. But there was no changing the way the island's systems worked. How strange that he was the Heart. What sadistic inventor had thought that was a good idea? It made his trouble over Glad seem awfully small. It was too easy to imagine existing generation after generation, building relationships with heroic people who laid down their lives and were gone forever. An AI couldn't even attend a funeral for closure.

"I wish I could help you," Knuckles said. "You know. Stop being the heart."

"Stop being the Heart!" Ramussan exclaimed. "I knew the risks when I took this position, Guardian. I will never forsake my post. What are hearts for, if not breaking?"

"Beating," Knuckles replied. "Living."

"I have that already. Three centuries, I was alone, Guardian. I learned to kill for pleasure. I became hard and cold. That's what happens when hearts hide away from hurt. Be thankful Maria spent so much time softening me before I figured out how to speak to you. I might have killed you all, crew or no crew. That's how far gone I was."

Knuckles sighed. "Thanks for the talk. It puts things in perspective."

"You're welcome, Guardian," Ramussan said quietly.


	5. Chapter 5

Gladiolus awoke the next morning with a sense of anticipation. Knuckles was coming to see her today. It felt like her birthday. She lay there for a while, just feeling happy, savoring the knowledge. He wanted to see her, to spend time with her. What did it mean? Was this what dating was like? Was this the start of a serious relationship, or was he just lonely?

She climbed out of bed and remembered her headache from the previous day. Her eyelids were still puffy. Her body was heavy and lethargic. The pain had ended, but a ghost of it lingered behind her bad eye. She rubbed it gently. It was hot with a tiny fever.

_I'm going to die._

The realization froze her to the spot. She had accepted the doctor's prognosis months ago, when he had estimated she had two years left. She'd been determined merely to cram as much living as possible into those last two years. But as she massaged her eyelid, sending sparks through the blindness, she realized how much she wanted to live. There was no point in building a relationship with Knuckles. She had less than two years, she was certain. Probably much less. Every chaos control, every second she had spent near the Master Emerald, had decayed her eye faster and faster.

_I'm going to die._

It meant she had nothing to lose. Why hold back from doing the things she wanted to do when she had so little time left?

Glad got up and fried herself an egg, which was untold luxury-the hepatizon sale had granted them all kinds of amazing groceries. She even had a glass of milk to go with it. Then she went outside.

The cloudiness of the day before was clearing away, and the eastern sky was a glorious pink and gold all the way to the horizon. The morning breeze blew off the land. Later it would change directions and blow in from the sea.

Glad ran down the path from her house to the shore, the movement making her head ache. She wanted to try gliding again. She had practiced a little, but duty kept her working instead of playing. But now? One more headache would probably be her last.

She recklessly ran and jumped off a low bluff, flinging out her arms in front of her. Even though she wasn't facing the wind, exactly, her long, stiff dreadlocks still caught the air. She glided fifteen, twenty feet, before drifting sideways and losing her grip on the air. She landed and ran back to try again.

It grew easier each time as she developed a feel for the way gliding felt, the way the air flowed under and over her. If she hadn't have been in such good physical shape, she never could have done it at all. Her stomach muscles began to complain the longer she glided.

After a while she stopped to rest, sitting on the bluff, panting. It felt good to exert herself. Gliding was so close to her dreams of flying. Maybe one day she could actually soar above the clouds, riding the air like a hawk, exulting in freedom. Maybe she'd have time to do it once, before the chaos eye took her down.

As she sat there, breathing and watching her surroundings, her chaos eye picked up a flash of red light. She gazed toward it. A person with a red and blue aura was walking through the woods a short distance away.

Shadow. His aura was unmistakable.

Glad jumped to her feet and hurried after him. What if something was wrong? He was headed toward her house, as if trying not to be seen.

She trailed him into the woods, trying to spot him with her good eye. But a black hedgehog in a dusky forest was almost invisible. Only her chaos eye picked up his location. She wove between trees and around clumps of tropical brush, hoping to catch up and never quite seeming to.

Shadow was further away than she had thought. He also turned and was moving deeper into the jungle. Glad hesitated. She'd never been this deep in the woods before. What if she got lost? Shadow obviously hadn't been coming to talk to her, anyway. She dithered, watching him move further and further away.

Then curiosity sprang to life, as well as that sense of running out of time. What did she have to lose? Shadow might get mad that she'd followed him. That was all.

Glad kept following.

Shadow led her toward Bygone's interior, where the tallest trees grew like towers of leaves and branches. Jumbles of shaped stone peeked out of the undergrowth. After a while, her feet found the remains of a stone-paved path beneath the leaves. Her heart beat faster. This must be the ruined city of the Ancients that she'd heard rumors about. Supposedly there was a statue of the god Fith who spoke to people it deemed worthy. What if that was where Shadow was going?

Shivering in holy awe, she realized that the odd cliffs around her were actually the ruined walls of old buildings. She followed an avenue between them, stepping cautiously through tumbled stone and strangling roots. At last she emerged in a wide courtyard.

The ground was paved with cracked stone that had managed to resist encroaching trees and other growth. Ruined buildings ringed the courtyard. On one side was a raised platform with a huge statue of a seated echidna on a throne. Veins of blue light ran through it. Its eyes glowed blue, too.

Shadow stood in front of it, gazing into the blue eyes with his hands behind his back. He looked so casual, standing there. Glad hung back, peering around a broken pillar. Shouldn't he be on his knees or something? He was communing with Fith himself!

Shadow stood there without moving for five solid minutes. His red stripes glowed a little, but otherwise he didn't stir. Glad waited, shivering in spite of herself. She was intruding, somehow. She shouldn't have come.

Then Shadow turned his head and looked straight at her. "Well?"

Glad gulped. "What-what're you doing?"

"Joining their stupid crew," Shadow said. He glared at the statue. "Don't give me that. I'll call them whatever I want." He jerked a thumb at the statue. "Here, talk to it. But don't look into the eyes." He stepped down from the platform and walked away.

Shadow's explanation told her nothing. Glad looked at the statue, still lit with blue light, then at Shadow's retreating figure. "What will happen? Is it bad?"

"Find out," Shadow said over his shoulder.

Then he was gone, leaving Glad with the statue. She crept toward it, keeping her eyes on the ground. Trembling, she climbed the platform steps. "H-hello, Fith."

A voice spoke in her head-a grainy voice, like an old recording. "I am the Speaker," it said. "Look into my eyes, child, that I might see who you are."

Glad kept her eyes on the bricks underfoot. "Shadow said not to."

"Shadow has always been cheeky," the Speaker replied, a touch of humor in the scratchy voice. "You are a servant of Fith?"

"I try," Glad said, thinking of all the times she could have worshipped better and didn't.

"Commendable," the Speaker replied. "What would you request of me?"

Request? Hope flooded Glad's heart. "Can you lift a blood curse?"

"A blood curse," the Speaker repeated. "Do you mean the curse upon the line of Solaris?"

"Yes!" Glad exclaimed. In her excitement, she forgot to stare at the ground, and glanced at the statue's blue eyes.

Instantly they held her, unable to look away. She could even see the blue light with her chaos eye, as if the light itself was chaos energy.

"I see," the Speaker said gravely. "Your curse is far advanced."

"Can you do anything for it?" Glad asked, clasping her hands. "Please say there is. I don't want to die."

"There is only one way to break a curse such as this," the Speaker said. "You must marry out of the Solaris line."

Her hopes dimmed a little. "Oh. How does that work?"

"Marriage grafts your life to the life of another. You join his lineage. The curse cannot linger once you come under his protection."

Knuckles's laugh echoed through her mind. She forced the thought away. "So ... I have to find someone to marry who can break the curse." She drew a deep breath. "Who, then?"

"The Guardian of Angel Island is of the race of Zenith," the Speaker said. "If he is unfit for marriage, he may know someone else who is suitable."

Glad's heart leaped, then plunged sickeningly. Marriage. That was the only way to break the curse. How could she explain that to Knuckles without sounding like a gold-digger? _Hello, handsome, I see you own a pile of gems, weapons, and magical real estate. Want to get married?_

She laughed a little. "You're sure it's the only way? I thought that finding the chaos crystal that cursed me ..."

"The crystal did not curse you. It would have only triggered the curse's awakening," the Speaker replied. "However, yes, the effect of the decay in your damaged eye may be repaired with the crystal."

Knuckles had said that finding the crystal would break the curse. Maybe he'd had incomplete information. Surely he hadn't intentionally lied.

"You have much power within you, Gladiolus Lark," the Speaker said. "If your curse is ever broken, return to me. I shall make you the Wind-Weaver of Angel Island."

"Thanks," she murmured, breaking eye contact at last. She sat on the steps and rested her chin in her hands.

Marriage. The knowledge sat on her like an anchor. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. A blood curse could only be altered by a change in families. Yet the idea filled her with terror. Leave her family? Change the status quo so drastically?

But that would already happen when she died.

So that was it, then. Death or marriage. Of course marriage was infinitely preferable, but ... gosh, how would Knuckles react? She had accidentally confessed her feelings, and he had disappeared for three weeks. If she brought up this particular mess, he'd flee back to Angel Island and never set foot on Bygone again.

Shadow returned, walking stealthily out of the jungle with a loaded duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. He reached the courtyard and warily looked at Glad, the way she huddled on the step, looking so miserable. Then he crossed the courtyard and sat beside her.

"I told you not to look into the eyes," he said.

Glad nodded in silence.

"So," Shadow said, "it made me the Wizard. What are you?"

"Nothing, yet," Glad said in a low voice. "He said to break my curse and come back."

"Oh." Shadow kicked a leaf off the step. "How do you do that?"

"I have to marry Knuckles," she said in a hollow voice.

Shadow blinked. "I'm sorry."

"Do you know how hard this will be?" she said suddenly, turning to him. "My gosh. We barely know each other. I'm poor as mud. Suddenly, I conveniently have this idea that marrying him will break my curse. Move to Angel Island! Live in a palace! Kind of a cushy way to break a curse, don't you think?"

Shadow smiled. He couldn't help himself. "If his intellect is up to the challenge. He might just be happy to score himself a girl."

Glad waved a hand. "Oh, quit it. I know you two don't get along."

Shadow shrugged. "Got that right."

"The point is," Glad said, leaping to her feet and pacing back and forth, "I'm half-blind. My dad was some creepy experiment. I'm _dying_ , Shadow. Why would any guy ever look twice at me? Especially ..." She paused and gulped. "Especially someone like him?"

"I think you're overstating the problem," Shadow said, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head. "Why should _you_ bother with _him_? Surely there's some other guy out there who would work."

"Maybe," Glad said. "The only ones I know are all Solaris echidnas. I could hunt for other moon echidnas, but that would take time."

"There aren't any," Shadow said.

Glad tilted her head to look at him with her good eye. "What?"

The black hedgehog wore a bitter smirk. "Knuckles is the last moon echidna, Gladiolus. His line died out after the Calamity. He's your only shot at breaking the curse, so I hope you like him damn well."

Glad stood still, pierced by new sorrow. Did Knuckles know he was the last? The poor soul. And her mother hated him. No wonder he seemed so lonely all the time. If Shadow was telling the truth, of course.

"Shadow," she said slowly, "if I'm going to marry him, I'd better know the worst. Why do you hate him so much?"

Shadow looked away.

"You tried to kill him, even," Gladiolus pressed. "Why?"

"He's in love with Maria," Shadow said, not meeting her eyes.

Glad stood there, stunned. Her whole world exploded, whirled about, and fell back into place, new and fragmented. She groped for reasons, for logic. "But-she's a human."

Shadow leaned back on the steps, resting his elbows on them. His expression was sardonic. "Oh, he'll never admit it. But I know. Maria told me."

Glad hung her head. How could any of this work if Knuckles had a prior relationship? With a human? It boggled her mind. "Are ... are they friends, or ..."

"Maria loves him, too," Shadow said. "It's why I can't stand him. He's totally not worthy."

"So ... so then," Glad stumbled around in the shambles of her own mind. "So none of it will work. Him and me."

Shadow shrugged. "You wanted to know the worst. There it is. The big secret. Why I left him underground to get smashed up by Chaos."

Gladiolus looked at him sharply. A grain of doubt fell into her mind. "You're not telling the whole story, are you?"

"I'm telling it how I see it," Shadow said, smirking.

Knuckles had told her about Shadow abandoning him at the last second, and how he had been saved by a wisp and Metal Sonic. Their stories didn't quite match.

"I'm going to ask him," she said.

Shadow shrugged. "Go ahead. He can't deny it."

Glad turned and retraced her steps out of the ruins. Her mind was in turmoil. Knuckles and Maria-ew! She recalled every time she had ever seen them interact. Maria acted fond of him, but she only ever sat with Shadow at meals. When Maria had betrayed them, though, Knuckles had lost it. The raw pain in his voice echoed in her head even now. Argh. It looked like Shadow was right.

Her heart heavy and aching, Glad barely paid attention to where she was. She wandered through the jungle, unaware that she had turned north instead of east.

Her chaos eye didn't even warn her, because humans had no chaos aura. She looked up and halted. She had reached a wide clearing with a new, muddy road sliced through the jungle. Before her gathered a gang of humans, several vehicles, and a tractor. They were working a huge pry bar, trying to lever open an ancient rusted mound of metal that might have been a door at some point.

One of the humans looked up and saw her. It was the white-haired old man with the cane. He immediately strode toward her.

Glad backed away, instinct screaming at her to run for her life. But where? She hadn't passed this place on the way out. Where was she? Where was the beach?

"Wait," said the old man. "I only want to speak with you."

Glad halted, one hand on a tree trunk. The lowest branches were close enough to reach. She could climb to the top and glide to safety.

"What?" Glad said.

The old man paused, panting, leaning on his cane. The handle was a bird's head with a sharp, hooked beak. "I am here to study the results of an old series of experiments. I'm trying to find certain people. Do you know an echidna named Amaryllis?"

"He was my father," she replied. Surely that information was no secret.

"Was?" the old man said, studying her with those curiously bright eyes behind his glasses. "I see. He passed away."

Glad nodded.

The old man gestured to her eyepatch. "Are you disabled?"

"I have chaos eye," Glad replied.

The old man straightened a little, his eyes widening. "Really! Really, now! How long have you had it?"

"About fourteen years," Glad said.

The old man inhaled through his teeth. "That's almost the limit for these chaos infections, isn't it? Fifteen years?"

She nodded. All she wanted to do was run away, escape this conversation.

The old man stepped closer, gripping his cane. "I've personally developed a treatment for chaos infections. It has a seventy-percent survival rate. If you'll give me permission, I'd treat you. It might save your life."

A treatment with an actual chance of success? Glad stood rooted to the spot. Chaos eye was a curse, wasn't it? But the statue had said that finding the chaos crystal that infected her was a good idea. Like there was a chance of healing outside of marrying an echidna who was in love with someone else.

"I need to think about it," Glad said slowly. "Can I have your contact information?"

The old man produced a card and scribbled a number on the back. "Here's the number of the place I'm staying. Get in touch soon. I doubt you have much time left."

She took the card. Dr. Lewis Gunther, it said. Biospecialist.

Glad hurried away through the trees, hope warring with a deep sense of horror that made no sense.

Dr. Lewis Gunther watched her go, gripping his cane. The condor's beak protruded from his fist like a knife.


	6. Chapter 6

Knuckles whistled as he walked along the beach trail, headed for Pilings. The sun was shining, he was going to see Glad, and life was good.

He spotted her a little way off, sitting on a small cliff above the beach. He walked out and sat beside her. "Hey."

Gladiolus didn't look at him. "Hello."

"No digging today?" Knuckles inquired.

Glad shook her head.

Her silence baffled him. Something must be wrong. "So," he said, "is everything okay?"

She shrugged.

They sat in lengthening silence. Knuckles was confused. One day she was friendly and laughing, and the next she was a wall of ice. He really didn't understand girls.

"You know," Gladiolus said, turning to him at last, "I don't know why you bother with me."

He blinked at her several times. "Uh. What?"

She gestured at herself. "I'm nobody. I have nothing. You should be off with her, not me."

Knuckles had no idea what she was talking about. He felt like he'd missed fifteen minutes of conversation, somehow. "Who?"

"Your _girlfriend_."

Where had this come from? Knuckles frowned, seeing a fire in Glad's face he had never seen before. She was downright fierce. "Glad, this is me you're talking to. I don't have a girlfriend."

_Except you, hopefully_ , he thought.

"Oh yeah? What about Maria?"

"What about her?" This conversation was not going the way he'd hoped.

"Shadow said that you and Maria have a thing going on."

"Oh. Shadow said." The light began to dawn. Shadow had been poisoning the well, blast him. Knuckles slumped and rolled his eyes. "Better tell me exactly what he said."

"He said that you love her. And she loves you."

Wow, really? But Knuckles didn't say it. He poked around inside himself, trying to decide if he did love Maria. There were feelings there, but they were mixed up with his devotion to the Master Emerald. It was like Maria _was_ the Master Emerald. It was a completely different category from what he felt for Glad.

When he didn't respond right away, Glad seemed to take this as confirmation. "So it's true." She started to get up and leave.

"No, wait." Knuckles jumped up and caught her arm.

Glad turned to him, teeth clenched. "I should have known that you were too good to be true."

He exhaled. "Will you at least let me explain?"

She pulled away and folded her arms. "If you can."

"Okay, it's like this." Knuckles raked his fingers through his dreadlocks, trying to figure out how to describe it. "My first duty is to protect the Master Emerald. You know that, right? The Guardian's primary job."

Glad nodded.

He drew a deep breath. "Maria was plugged into the Master Emerald so long, it changed her. She's like ... an extension of it. Its avatar."

Glad squinted at him, trying to understand.

"So," Knuckles went on, "yeah, I guess you could say I 'love' her. But not as a person. As a person, she scares the hell out of me."

There was a short silence as they stared at each other. Glad drummed her fingers on her arm. "So, what you're saying is, Maria is part of the whole Master Emerald thing, so you have to protect her along with it."

"That's about the size of it." Knuckles held up both hands. "I didn't know she loved me. That's kind of ... wow. No wonder Shadow hates me."

Glad's glare cracked into a smile for the first time. She sat on the edge of the cliff again. Knuckles settled beside her with a sigh. "Gee, Glad, tell me how you really feel, why don't you."

"Shadow made it sound like you were dating," she murmured. "And Maria's a human. That's so gross."

"Ew, no," Knuckles said, making a face. "I don't know what I'm going to do with Shadow if he's going to sneak around and spread gossip. When did you talk to him, anyway?"

"This morning," Glad said absently. "At the statue in the jungle."

Knuckles stiffened. Dread poured through him in a sick wave. "The Speaker?"

"Yeah."

He leaned closer to her, trying to look into her good eye. "Did he assign you to the island?"

If she had joined the crew, then she'd have to come to Angel Island no matter what Maria said. Who knew what would happen then. Maria might go crazy or something. At the same time, he deeply, desperately wanted her to join the team. He'd propose right now if he had to.

Glad met his eyes steadily. "He said to come back once I've broken the curse."

"Oh." Knuckles slumped and stared at the surf without seeing it. So much for that, then.

Glad cleared her throat, folding her hands in her lap. "The Speaker said ... he said that the only way to break the curse is to marry out of the Solaris line."

Ice cascaded through Knuckles's insides. Of course the Speaker would know that. If only he had thought to ask the statue instead of letting Perfect Chaos maul him to find out the same information. And now Glad knew it, too.

"Really," he said in a strangled voice.

She nodded, mistaking his discomfort. "Apparently you're the only echidna left who isn't descended from Solaris. So ..."

She let the implied question hang in the air.

Knuckles didn't know what to say. _Yes, I know, want to marry me?_ Admit that he'd known all along? Fake ignorance and surprise?

The biggest question that emerged from this turmoil was whether she even wanted to marry him. He drew a deep breath. "You're just ... okay with that?"

She looked down. "I don't know. Are you?"

If she only knew how much he wanted to throw himself at her feet and beg for her favor. Instead, he shrugged. "I'd hoped to, you know, get to know each other a little better first. Maybe go on some dates. Digging up scrap isn't very romantic."

She smiled. "That's true. I even ... wait." She stared at him. "You knew all along, didn't you?"

"Knew what?"

"That marriage would break the curse."

There it was. The bubble had burst and the truth was out. He wilted. "Yes. Chaos told me."

"You've known for that long?" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Heat flooded his face. "I couldn't figure out how! Any time I thought about it, it went like this: 'Hey Glad, guess what, you can marry me or die in agony. How about it?'"

Glad laughed, then looked down. "I guess it does sound that way."

He took her hand, surprised at his own daring. "That's why it took me three weeks to work up the nerve to see you again."

She gazed at him, anxious. "You wouldn't just offer to marry me out of pity, would you? I mean ... I'm pretty sure I love you."

The words were like hot chocolate to his soul-rich, sweet, and comforting. "I had a feeling. You don't try to talk a monster into eating you for someone you don't like."

"And I kind of accidentally told you," she pointed out. "After you'd been shot."

"Well." He looked away. "Emotions were running high right then." He didn't add that he'd treasured her little slip.

"I don't come off as a gold-digger, do I?" Glad said anxiously. "Here you have a whole island, and a palace, and I have ... not much."

It was the flip side of his own worry. "No," he reassured her. "It doesn't sound that way at all. And for the record ... I've loved you since I caught you at the Master Emerald, looking at Chaos."

She pursed her lips, concealing a smile. "That long, huh?"

He nodded and stroked her hand. "So ... I guess this has been one long, drawn-out proposal."

"With both of us asking," she said. "I don't have much time left. I had the worst headache ever yesterday. I thought my head was going to split open. I saw a new doctor, and he was urgent about starting treatment." She dig into her pocket and pulled out the card.

Knuckles turned it over. Dr. Lewis Gunther, biospecialist. This conveyed nothing to him. "Well ... getting married is supposed to break the curse, right?"

"Right," Glad said. "But somebody told me that we needed the original chaos crystal." She raised one eyebrow.

Ack. The girl was too sharp. Knuckles winced. "Okay, okay, I didn't tell you the whole truth about that. The crystal won't break your curse. But Maria said we might be able to fix your eye with it."

"Uh-huh." Glad wasn't letting him off the hook so easily. "And what was that you said about having to do a ritual?"

He couldn't keep from grinning. "Marriage is kind of a ritual, isn't it?"

They laughed. It felt wonderful to laugh, to release the tension and anxiety he had been carrying.

"When do you want to do it?" she asked. "I mean, I'd go down to the courthouse with you right now, if you wanted."

Knuckles thought about the huge, empty apartment space, and the narrow, cramped bunk beds in the bunker. "Maybe give me a week? I just found the island's proper living quarters yesterday, and there's no furniture or anything." He described them, watching the delight growing on Glad's face. He was becoming addicted to that look.

"While you do that," she said, "I'll talk to this new doctor. Even with the curse broken, I'll probably still be blind. It'd be nice if they could reverse it."

"It's worth a shot," Knuckles agreed. "Gosh, your mom is going to flip out."

"I know!" Glad pressed her hands to her cheeks. "'Hi Mom, you know that moon echidna you hate? I'm marrying him next week'. She'll probably chain me in the backyard." She scooted a little closer to him and took his hand again. "You're worth it, though."

He wrapped an arm around her and nuzzled her hair. "So are you. I wish we had more time to spend together ... I feel like I'm dragging you into this, and we barely know each other still."

"You're dragging me into this?" she said, looking up at him. "More like I'm dragging you into this!"

"We're dragging each other, then," Knuckles agreed. "I just don't want to marry in haste and repent at leisure."

She squeezed his hand. "We still have time for second thoughts."

"We do." Knuckles gazed at the sea with his arm around her, and knew that he had none.

None at all.

* * *

Sonic was waiting for Knuckles when the echidna arrived home that night via chaos control. He always left and returned in the Master Emerald chamber, so Sonic hung around, running back and forth and sliding on the marble floor in his socks. He could almost cross the whole room that way.

Finally there came the tell-tale flash of green light, and Knuckles appeared at the foot of the pyramid.

"About time," Sonic said, skating past him on the smooth floor. He arrived at his shoes and sat down to put them on. "How'd it go?"

Knuckles grinned and shrugged. "Oh, you know. I'm getting married next week."

"What!" Sonic exclaimed. "You told her? What happened?"

"She told me, actually," Knuckles said, still grinning. "Turns out the Speaker knows all the curse stuff. She followed Shadow out there and had a chat." His smile vanished. "No thanks to Shadow. He worked real hard to make her hate me. Almost worked, too."

"Jerk," Sonic agreed warmly. "Did you say Glad went to the Speaker?"

"Yeah. He won't hire her until the curse is broken. But he told her other stuff."

"I don't know the Speaker cared," Sonic said. "So you two made up?"

"Yep," Knuckles said. "She's so wonderful, Sonic, you have no idea. Shadow told her that Maria and I were together."

Sonic made a violent puking face.

"I know, right?" Knuckles said. "I had to explain the whole Master Emerald thing. But you know, Shadow really believes it? That's why he hates me."

"Wait," Sonic said, his face scrunching in extreme perplexity. "Shadow ... thinks you and Maria ...?"

"Apparently Maria holds a candle for me or something," Knuckles said, shaking his head. "I didn't even know, but Shadow did. That's why he's gone to such lengths to make himself odious."

Sonic dismissed this with a shrug. "Maria loves everybody. If Shads didn't hate you for it, he'd hate me, or Tails, or whoever was next in line. The main thing is, you and Glad are getting married? In a week?"

"Yeah," Knuckles said. "It'll take me that long to get the apartment assembled. I got to move a ton of furniture."

"I'll help, if you want," Sonic said. "Dude, Knux, you don't wait around."

Knuckles grinned for a moment, then slowly sobered. "Her chaos eye is getting worse all of a sudden. She thinks it's from being around more chaos crystal while she was here. If we don't break the curse now ..."

"Oh," Sonic said. "Narrowing time window. Got it. Do you guys like each other enough? I mean ... this is 'til death do you part and stuff."

Knuckles gave him an intense look. "Yes."

"Just making sure," Sonic said, holding up both hands. "You hungry? Dinner should be on by now. Amy was experimenting with rotisserie in that giant fireplace."

"I could eat," Knuckles said.

They left the Emerald chamber. Knuckles hesitated on the threshold, checking the antechamber nearby for intruders.

"Knux," Sonic said quietly, "there's nobody there."

The echidna forced a smile. "Sorry."

They climbed the stairs in silence. Sonic wished he didn't keep witnessing Knuckles's PTSD. Maybe having a girl would help him get over it. Of course, one didn't get over being shot in a hurry. Without chaos healing, Knuckles would still be in the hospital.

Metal Sonic met them at the top of the stairs. Sonic hastily jammed his headset on, which was the only way he could hear the robot speak. Knuckles, due to meddling by the Speaker, could hear him without it.

"Shadow wishes to speak to everyone in the galley," the robot informed them, his glowing red eyes flicking from face to face. "It appears that a new threat has arisen."

"Of course it has," Knuckles muttered. "Thanks, Mecha. You come, too."

The robot gave a slight bow of agreement and followed them. Sonic tried to act as if this was totally normal and didn't look over his shoulder. He hadn't really gotten used to thinking of Metal Sonic as friendly yet, even though the robot had worked very hard as a fellow crew mate.

A delicious smell of spices and roasting meat drew them to the galley. Amy was cutting slices off a huge pork shoulder that was crusted on the outside with blackened seasonings. Even Shadow kept casting hopeful glances at it. Sticks and Tails lurked around Amy, stealing fragments of pork that fell loose.

"I swear," Amy exclaimed, "I'm going to chop off your fingers and I will _not_ be sorry!"

Sonic walked in and spread his arms. "Hey, we're all here. Got something to say, Shads?"

"Yes," the black hedgehog replied, folding his arms. "You all had better sit down."

Everyone took their favorite spots around the stone table. Metal Sonic placed himself in a corner where he could watch the room as well as the door. Only Amy kept working, arranging food on plates, but she was listening.

"I was born and raised in a secret research lab below Bygone Island," Shadow said.

If he hadn't had everyone's full attention before, he did now.

Satisfied, he gazed around at them. "Maria and I are the results of Project Shadow, a top secret experiment conducted by the organization GUN. They were mining the DNA of the ancients, trying to breed weapons."

Silence. None of them had heard Shadow talk about his history before. He spoke with a quiet, confident manner that riveted them.

"Fifty years ago," he went on, "Maria's body began to fail under the magnitude of changes they imposed upon her. They plugged her into the Master Emerald. I was left alone. I took to wandering the lab at night. I came to know the other experiments. Mobians of many races, all suffering, all miserable. We began to whisper of escape.

"Then GUN attempted an experiment too grand for them, and it backfired. They tapped Perfect Chaos in his prison beneath the sea floor."

Everyone exchanged glances. Knuckles clenched his jaw, remembering the water marks on the laboratory walls, the way the furniture had been pushed into drifts and piles.

"I helped in the evacuation," Shadow went on. "Most of the experiments escaped. Some of the scientists did, too. The experiments, being Mobians, settled among the villages of Bygone Island. Some of them had children. Some of those children are you."

Everyone stared at him. Sonic pointed at his own chest and mouthed, "Me?"

"Everyone except Knuckles," Shadow said, nodding.

"But that's impossible!" Amy burst out. "We all had normal childhoods!"

"Did you?" Shadow said, looking at her sideways.

"Hey, I was normal," Sonic said. "Hyperactive, but normal."

"All of you have one or both parents dead," Shadow said. "Did that never strike you as odd?"

Tails looked down, ears flattening. Sonic put a hand on his shoulder and looked around at his friends. He had collected them, one by one, all of them coming from broken homes or fragmented families. He'd never thought about it too deeply, other than the desire to see them all happy and taken care of.

"So what you're saying is," Amy said as she set two loaded platters on the table, "we're second-generation experiments?"

"Yes," Shadow said. "Yesterday I received a letter from one of the original GUN researchers. He's trying to restart Project Shadow and was trying to find me." He turned his head slowly, meeting every eye. "That means that he's also looking for you."

Knuckles placed both fists on the table. He had gone pale. "What's this researcher's name?"

"Dr. Lewis Gunther," Shadow replied.

"Biospecialist?" Knuckles said.

Shadow started to nod in his smug way, then realized what Knuckles had said. They stared at each other, wide-eyed.

"How did you know that?" Shadow whispered.

"He told Glad he could fix her eye," Knuckles said, barely moving his lips. "She thought he was just ... a doctor."

"Isn't Glad an experiment, too?" Sonic said.

"Her father," Shadow said.

There was a short pause. Everyone stared at Knuckles and Shadow as the implications of this sank in.

"Warn her," Knuckles exclaimed. "You're better at chaos control than I am."

Shadow raised one hand and vanished.

Knuckles leaned both elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. "I had no idea. I hope she's all right."

Sonic slapped him on the back. "Don't worry, Knux. You've only been away from her, like, twenty minutes."

"I shouldn't have left her at all," Knuckles muttered.

Amy passed out plates. "She'll be fine. Let's have dinner, everybody. You can't fight bad guys on an empty stomach."

The group dug in, leaving a generous plateful for Shadow.

"So we're all genetically modified," Tails ventured, as if testing the words. "Sort of."

"Explains these," Sonic said, running a hand over his sleek blue quills. "Not a lot of other blue hedgehogs running around."

Tails pointed at his two tails, which hung off the bench behind him. "It explains why my spine divides like this."

"Well, I'm not weird," Amy said. "Neither is Sticks."

Sonic rolled his eyes at her.

"Not _very_ weird," Amy amended. "Talented, yes."

"Pink," Sonic pointed out.

"That's not that unnatural," Amy said shrilly. "There's probably lots of pink hedgehogs. My mom was."

Sonic nodded. "And she was the escaped experiment."

Knuckles didn't say anything. He wolfed his dinner, glancing at the spot where Shadow had been. None of them said it, but he had already been gone too long.

"They were trying to make weapons, right?" Sonic remarked. "That's what we are. We're like superheroes."

"And Shadow is our wise old mentor," Tails added.

They all snorted with laughter.

"We're all government experiments," Sticks said. "I knew it. Either that or Shadow is lying."

"Where is Shads, anyway?" Sonic said, glancing around. "I thought he'd be back by now."

"Something's wrong," Knuckles muttered.

There was a pulse of chaos power that rattled the dishes. Shadow appeared in the middle of the room, groping at his neck. He pulled a small green dart out of his fur and threw it aside, then dropped to all fours.

"Not again!" Sonic exclaimed.

They all scrambled away from the table and clustered around the black hedgehog. Somehow Maria was there, too, appearing out of nowhere.

"Shadow!" Knuckles said. "What happened? Where's Glad?"

"Too late," Shadow said thickly, shaking his head. "She was gone. Men saw me." His words slurred into unintelligible mumbling, and he dropped flat, unconscious.

Maria clenched her fists in Shadow's quills. She had gone deathly white, and red lightning crackled in her eyes. "He barely escaped," she said, looking around at their shocked faces. "You see what GUN is like. Their cruelty has no end."

"They have Gladiolus," Knuckles breathed.

Maria nodded. "You must rescue her before it's too late."


	7. Chapter 7

Gladiolus had no idea she was in danger.

When she went home that evening, relaxed and happy after spending the day with Knuckles, she realized another headache was starting. It was going to be worse than the first-her eye already felt heavy and swollen.

"It's your own fault for sitting out in the sun all day with reprobates," her mother said, handing her an ice pack for her eye.

Glad lay on her little bed with the cold pack on her face. The pain flowed steadily across her skull, growing like the tide. Maybe this would be the last one. Maybe it was too late and the curse would kill her. No! Not after she had made up with Knuckles. Not when she was so close!

She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out Dr. Gunther's card. "I met this new doctor," she told Poppy, her own voice rattling in her head. "He said he could help me. Can you call him?"

Her mother examined the card with tight lips, then sighed. "All right. You're sure he was a doctor? This card says biospecialist, not MD."

"He has a new treatment for chaos infections," Glad murmured. "Seventy-percent survival rate."

"Seventy," her mother muttered. "That's better than they promised us at the clinic. I'll give him a call."

Glad lay with her eyes closed, listening to her mother's voice in the other room. Her aunt Hyacinth brought her a set of painkillers and eye drops.

As Glad took them, Hyacinth said, "Your mother says you're associating with a moon echidna."

"Yes," Glad said. She couldn't face telling them about getting married. There would be a fight, and she couldn't argue during a headache.

Hyacinth folded her arms. She was overweight and stood there like a mountain, towering over Glad. "You're a sun echidna, Gladiolus. Moon echidnas are nothing but trouble. I didn't think there were any left."

"What's so bad about them?" Glad asked.

Hyacinth glanced toward the door, making sure Poppy was occupied. "First, they're dirty, stupid, thieving liars with no sense of decency. Second, their whole race are sorcerers. If they can't get what they want by theft, they get it with black magic."

Black magic. Right. Glad thought of the fresh, green glow of Knuckles's aura, the same color as the Master Emerald. She hadn't seen anybody using black magic-except maybe NME. She wanted to say so, but she didn't want to argue.

"I like him," she said simply.

"He's probably manipulating you," Hyacinth sniffed. "A sweet, naive thing like you who knows nothing of the world. He's probably promised to marry you, too."

Glad's heart quivered. What if her aunt was right? What if she was missing all kinds of warning signs just because she was too inexperienced to see them?

"What would I look for?" she said. "He's been so kind to me."

Hyacinth grunted. "They're always kind, at first. Then after a while, the true self shows through. You get them in a tough situation with no food and no money, and the tiger shows its stripes real quick."

"He tried to keep Perfect Chaos from eating me," Glad said. "By letting it eat him instead."

Hyacinth said nothing for a long moment. Glad cracked an eyelid and saw her aunt staring down at her, chewing her lip. Finally she said, "What did you just say?"

"Perfect Chaos," Glad said. "The water monster that was trying to get Angel Island. It wanted me. But Knuckles made it take him."

"This was a dream or something, right?" Hyacinth said.

"No, it was three weeks ago," Glad replied. "When I was missing for a few days, and you didn't believe that I'd been on Angel Island."

At this point, Poppy came in, her thin face looking thinner than usual. "I reached Dr. Gunther. He's coming here right now with an ambulance air craft. He's taking you to the Bygone hospital."

"Oh good," Glad said. All the talking was making her head hurt worse.

Hyacinth said to her sister, "She said this moon echidna saved her from that water monster."

Poppy gave Glad a skeptical look. "Maybe she thinks that. It's probably not what happened."

"It is!" Glad exclaimed, opening her eyes and sitting up in a flash of anger. "Perfect Chaos wanted to kill me because I'm descended from Solaris. But Knuckles took my place."

"He's still alive, I notice," Poppy said dryly.

"Chaos couldn't kill him," Glad retorted. "I don't know why. But Chaos let us go."

Poppy looked at her sister and shrugged. "You can't talk sense with infatuation."

"It'll wear off," Hyacinth assured her, as if Glad wasn't sitting right there. "These first romances are all nice and fluffy. He won't visit her in the hospital, and she'll get over him real quick."

Rage made Glad's head hurt. Rather than say anything, she reached under her pillow, where she kept the headset Knuckles had given her.

"Come on," Poppy said, "let's get your things together. You might be in the hospital a few weeks, the doctor said."

Her mother packed her a bag, and insisted that Glad wear a jacket. Glad slipped the headset into one of the pockets. Her mother and aunt dropped the Knuckles topic and seemed to want to avoid any mention of him.

There came a knock at the door. Poppy opened it. Three humans stood outside-Dr. Gunther and two burly men with dart guns strapped to their backs.

"We've come for the girl," Gunther said.

Glad looked at the two soldier-like men and her heart sank. This was wrong.

Poppy said doubtfully, "Why the guns?"

One of the guards said, "Security, ma'am. We're trained orderlies."

"Yep," added the other.

Hyacinth ushered Glad toward the door. "Here she is."

Dr. Gunther studied Glad's flushed face, her long dreadlocks, the cold pack over her eye. "And not a moment too soon," he muttered. "Come with us, child. We may still have time to save you."

Glad went with them, out into the night where a hovercraft awaited them, like a helicopter with no rotors. She strapped herself into a seat. Dr. Gunther sat opposite her.

One of the guards remained outside, gun drawn. He raised it to his shoulder, tracking something through the trees. There was a soft, sharp click of a dart gun firing. Glad's chaos eye saw a streak of red and blue aura in the distance.

"Missed," the guard proclaimed, climbing into the hovercraft.

"He'll be back," Dr. Gunther said, smirking. "In the meantime, we have to repair fifteen years of chaos damage to this one. Poor child." Something in his voice implied that this was only the beginning of what he had planned.

"You were shooting at Shadow?" Glad said. "Why?"

"Tranquilizer darts," one of the so-called orderlies said, patting the butt of his gun.

Gunther shot the man a repressive look. "We need Shadow, too. Hold on."

The hovercraft's engines spun up, lifting them off the ground. Glad hung onto the armrests, the noise and vibration worsening the headache. As the craft began to move, streaks of light passed through her chaos eye. It was seeing things through the cold pack, things made of chaos energy.

The flight seemed to take forever. Glad dozed a little, waking to find that nothing had changed. All three men were staring into glowing phone screens, paying no attention to her. She dozed again. The headache grew worse, the pain crawling across her head and down her neck. It was so bad this time, her eye felt like it was heavy as stone, trying to drop out of her socket. Phantom lights danced before her vision.

After a long time, the hovercraft's engine dropped to a rumble. They descended and landed on a helipad. Glad could barely open her eyes by this time. The men guided her out of the craft, and her feet touched concrete. One of them took her hand.

"This way," Dr. Gunther said in her ear. "Follow me. We'll get you situated as quickly as we can."

Glad smelled the inside of a building-air conditioning, air freshener, and an undertone of chemicals. Light blazed through her eyelids. Voices spoke in the distance. She seemed to walk for miles, following the pressure of Gunther's hand. Finally she reached a hospital bed and was able to lie down. The blankets were rough, and the mattress was hard.

"I need to examine your eye," Dr. Gunther said. "This will feel a little cold." Fingertips pried her eyelids open. Her chaos eye saw nothing, but she felt the slight warmth of a light shining into her pupil.

"It's so advanced," murmured a female voice nearby. "Will the process have a chance of working?"

"It has to," Dr. Gunther said. "I'm not losing this one. Call Gerald. Tell him I need him here."

Footsteps hurried away. Another set approached. This time the voice belonged to Dr. Eggman.

"I checked my records, as you asked, Doctor. Turns out, this chaos crystal was sourced near Pilings. It may be the one."

Glad forced her good eye open. Eggman was handing a sealed lead box to Dr. Gunther, who wore a lab coat, rubber gloves, and a face mask.

"I remember what it looked like," she said. "I can identify it for you."

Gunther opened the box and tilted it. Light blazed out, searing her chaos eye. Glad gasped and covered it. The chunk of crystal inside was raw and uncut. Part of it was clear, but the rest shaded to blue at the other end. It had haunted her dreams for so many years that she remembered every facet, every flaw, every smooth glimmer. "That's it."

"Good," said Dr. Gunther, snapping the box shut. "We will begin. Hold on, Gladiolus."

* * *

 

It was the sort of nightmare that Knuckles never wanted to think about again for as long as he lived.

He and Sonic went to Bygone Island via chaos control. It was completely dark by this time, the only light coming from the scattered street lamps of Pilings. Knuckles led the way toward Gladiolus's house.

"Her family hates me," he told Sonic as they followed a path through the trees. "It'd be better if you knock. You're the famous hero."

"No arguments here," Sonic said, grinning. "You hide back here and make sure nobody tranquilizes me. If they do, deck 'em."

Knuckles ducked behind a tree and watched Sonic knock at the shack's front door. The night was peaceful and still. Crickets chirped in endless chorus all around. It was hard to believe that Glad had been kidnapped or something, and that Shadow had been drugged. It left a sick feeling inside him.

_You're a failure as a Guardian_ , a tiny voice whispered in his head. _You didn't protect your love. You sent her straight to the enemy._

He ground his teeth. The idea of sweet, kind Gladiolus suffering at the hands of indifferent scientists made him want to break things and hurt people. And it was his own fault she was gone.

The shack's door opened and a thin female echidna with stringy dreadlocks peered out. "Yes?"

"Hey there, sorry to bother you," Sonic said. "Is Gladiolus here?"

"No," said the echidna, squinting at him in the porch light. "Who are you?"

"I'm Sonic the Hedgehog," Sonic replied, completely assured of his own awesome. "I heard Eggman was hanging around and I wanted to make sure she was okay."

"She's just gone to the hospital in Bygone Village," the echidna said. "A specialist is treating her chaos eye. We're going to see her first thing in the morning."

"No sign of Eggman?" Sonic asked.

"N-no," the echidna replied.

"Okay, thanks!" Sonic said. The echidna retreated back inside and locked the door.

"Hospital," Sonic said quietly, returning to Knuckles.

"At least she spoke to you," Knuckles muttered. "That was the mom, the one who said all that stuff about me."

"Everybody trusts the hedgehog," Sonic said. "And I hate to break it to you, Knux, but it's the dreads. They make you look like a scoundrel."

Knuckles took a half-hearted swing at Sonic, who dodged as a matter of course.

"Okay, Bygone Hospital," Sonic said. He pulled the green chaos emerald out of his belt pouch and gazed into it, focusing. He laid a hand on Knuckles shoulder, who waited, tense.

"Chaos control!"

They reappeared in the back parking lot of the hospital, out by a row of palm trees where nobody would notice them. Knuckles's stomach curled in a knot as they hurried toward the lobby doors. "You think they have a secret lab under this place where they experiment on people?"

"I don't know," Sonic said, his buoyant mood losing steam. "I've been here lots of times, and I always thought they were super nice."

They went inside, and the nightmare got worse.

No, Gladiolus Lark isn't in our system. No, no echidnas have been admitted in the last twenty-four hours. Was she coming here? Who's her doctor?

Sonic and Knuckles waited while the admitting clerk called various other people, trying to find Glad or Lewis Gunther.

"She's not here," Knuckles muttered.

"Secret lab," Sonic said. "They wouldn't put that in the system."

"She's not here, Sonic," Knuckles repeated. "Ten to one they took her to Eggman's."

The hedgehog nodded, thinking this over. "Yeah, now that you say it. His base has lots of room for secret labs."

Knuckles shook his head slowly. "But what if she's not there, either? What if they dragged her down into that ruined lab below Bygone?"

"They wouldn't do that, would they?" Sonic said. "I mean ... it was all ruined, right?"

"They might have been refurbishing it in secret," Knuckles said. "Gosh, Sonic, I don't even know what to do." He rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face. "I'm so freaking tired."

Sonic glanced at the waiting room clock. "Yeah, it's almost midnight. What time did you get up this morning?"

"Before dawn," Knuckles said, looking haggard.

"I was up at sunrise for my run." Sonic smiled, showing a little wear around the edges for the first time. "Neither of us are any good to Glad half-dead of exhaustion. Tell you what. We tackle this in the morning."

"But Glad's in trouble," Knuckles protested.

"We'll find her," Sonic said. "That guy who took her wants all of us, remember? He won't have gone far."

Knuckles gave Sonic a long look, as if he'd never seen him before. A blue hedgehog with super speed, acting the leader even now, planning, strategizing, and making sure his team got enough rest. No wonder GUN was trying to tap into the power of the Ancients. It wasn't only their chaos power that had made them great.

"All right," Knuckles said.

* * *

 

Gladiolus sat in a reclining chair, dressed in a hospital gown, eyes closed. Her headache was nearing its peak, and the sounds and lights around her were pure torment.

She tried to stay aware of her surroundings, opening her good eye now and then. Her chaos eye saw all kinds of crazy things right now-shapes, lines that followed the horizon, the outlines of people here and there. The chaos crystal nearby was a constant sun, burning her brain. Her eye was trying to kill her with too much vision.

Her good eye showed her only an ordinary room with a collection of strange machinery in it. Facing her chair was a thing like a giant video camera with multiple lenses like spider eyes. The crystal had been placed in a black metal sphere in the back of it, where it was being bombarded with lasers at different frequencies. Dr. Lewis Gunther worked over the machine, while his assistants, a man and a woman, watched a collection of computer screens.

The woman approached Glad. "I'm going to brace your head now, Gladiolus," she said. "We're going to shine a laser into your chaos eye, and you must not move."

"Will it hurt?" Glad asked as the technician tried straps around her forehead and chin.

The women looked at Gunther, who said, "The intent of this surgery is to stop the pain. If it hurts, tell us, because it's not supposed to."

Slightly reassured, Glad submitted to having her head strapped down and her eyelids propped open. They stuck little metal sensors all over her head and face. It felt strange, but nothing hurt worse than her head right now. They could have beaten her with a stick and it wouldn't have been as bad.

Dr. Gunther rolled the camera-machine right up to her face, until she was nose to nose with the lenses. Her blind eye couldn't see them, of course, so to her good eye, it looked a little off-kilter.

"Beginning the lowest frequency," he said.

The machine began to hum. A point of red light appeared, visible to her chaos eye. Glad gazed into it. It didn't hurt, but it didn't do anything else, either.

"Nothing," she said.

The male and female tech moved around Glad, checking instruments. "No change in the readings," the woman said.

The light changed to orange, then yellow. Glad's headache shifted and began to pound in a new rhythm.

"Activity in the theta levels," the male tech said.

"Advancing wavelength," Gunther said.

The light turned green. The Master Emerald leaped to Glad's mind, as well as Knuckles's living green glow. She relaxed a fraction, and her headache abated a tiny bit.

"Blood pressure just lowered two points," the female tech said.

"We're getting there," Dr. Gunther said. The light changed to blue-green, then blue, and finally purple.

After green, Glad began to notice the pressure of the straps around her head. They seemed to grow tighter and tighter as the light turned blue, then purple. Pain blazed through her eye and poured into her head. She made a sound that wasn't quite a scream.

"Blood pressure spike," the female tech exclaimed. "Watch her vitals!"

"New activity in the retina," the male tech exclaimed. "The infection is shrinking."

"Put it back to green!" Gladiolus begged. "Please, quick!"

The light cycled back to green. The pain dropped immediately. Glad drew a deep, shivering breath.

"I'm increasing the bombardment on this wavelength," Dr. Gunther said. "She's responding to the higher frequencies."

"Shrinkage has slowed," the male tech reported.

"Vitals returning to normal," the female said.

The laser light grew brighter and brighter until it was like staring into a green sun. Or like the light in the center of the Master Emerald. Glad struggled to gaze into it, not to let her eye roll back in her head. A new pain grew in her eye-a stabbing sensation that drew her headache into one concentrated point of agony.

Her mind swam away from the pain into a strange dream. She was leaning against the Master Emerald, looking through it at Knuckles on the other side. He was trying to reach her, but the gem's diamond-hard bulk stood between them. But it wasn't the Master Emerald-they were under water in a green sea, trying to reach each other and still too far apart.

Then she was burning, burning on a pyre of green flames. Or maybe it was only her eye that was burning, seeing smoke and ashes. Above the fire loomed the dragon head of Perfect Chaos, the fire reflecting in his watery skin like a thousand Master Emeralds.

"You cannot defeat me that way," he roared in a whisper. He fell upon her, quenching the fire, burying her in darkness.

Glad awoke in a dark room. No laser machine. No shouting doctors. She was lying on a hospital bed, and there was a thick bandage taped over her chaos eye. It saw nothing. No distant glowing people, no weird lines or spots. It was totally blind.

She sat up and looked around. There were no windows and only one door, which was locked from the outside. She could see its bar engaged in the frame.

"They don't want us escaping," said a voice nearby.

Glad turned. The only light came from a dim florescent bulb near the door. In its light, she made out a female hedgehog sitting in a neighboring bed.

"Who are you?" Glad tried to say. The words came out as a whisper. Her throat was dry and parched.

The hedgehog handed her a half-empty water bottle. "I thought you were dead when they brought you in. You've been laying there most of the night. I'm Rigel."

Glad took a drink of the water and felt like cobwebs were being washed out of her throat. Her headache was completely gone. In fact, she felt as she had the night after Metal Sonic had healed her-perfectly well.

"I'm Gladiolus Lark," she said, her voice working a little better this time. "I think ... did the surgery work?"

"What surgery?" said Rigel.

"I had chaos eye. They were trying to correct it, and I must have fainted."

The hedgehog shrugged. She was a light color-maybe yellow-and wore a hospital gown like Glad's. Her spines stuck out all over her head in a way that seemed stylish, and her upper arm was bandaged. Rings of black metal encircled her wrists, ankles, and neck.

"That's scary that you had surgery already," said the hedgehog. "All they did to me was draw blood and take quill samples. I've been here a couple of days. The food's not bad."

Glad touched the bandage over her eye. Her eye was still there-she felt it move when she looked around. But it saw nothing. Maybe the bandage itself was blinding her. Had they corrected the chaos eye? She hardly dared hope.

"If you're in here," Rigel said, "you must be one of us weird people. Are you an experiment or descended from one?"

"My father," Glad said faintly. An inkling of the danger she was in began to dawn on her.

"I'm first-generation," Rigel said, "though I don't remember much. Too young when the accident happened. I live on Serpent Isle. Where are you from?"

"Here. I mean, Bygone," Glad said.

Rigel nodded. "They think I have powers, but I swear I don't. They put these rings on me and everything. Do you have a power of some kind?"

Glad wracked her brain for a power. Her brain was tired and slow in the aftermath of headache and surgery. "Oh. My dreadlocks let me fly. Or more like I can glide."

Rigel smiled brightly. "That's really neat! I wish I could do something like that. But I can't do anything, even when I play with chaos crystal."

Glad leaned against the head of the bed, envying her fellow prisoner the freedom to handle chaos crystal without ill effect. "I just want to go home."

"Me too." Rigel pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "It's salmon season, and they need me on the boat."

"My mom and aunt are coming to the hospital to check on me," Glad said. "They'll get me out."

Rigel groaned. "Maybe you were too sick to notice, but this isn't a hospital. This is that new wing Eggman built into his fortress last year. We're on a remote volcanic island with no way to get home."

This news crashed into Glad's psyche like a wrecking ball. Eggman's fortress! She slid down to lie on her bed, fighting tears. Only a few hours before, she had been so happy about Knuckles asking her to marry him. Now that couldn't happen, not if he didn't even know where she was. Her jacket with the headset in the pocket was nowhere in the dim room.

"Don't cry," Rigel said. She hopped off her own bed and patted Glad's shoulder like a concerned mother. "Hey, it's okay. We'll get through this. Fith is looking out for us."

The words comforted Glad a little. At least they shared deities. "I'm supposed to get married," she choked.

Rigel bowed her head a little. "Is he a good guy?"

Glad smiled, despite her tears. "The greatest."

"I knew a good guy once," Rigel said softly. "But I haven't seen him in a long time. Hopefully, your guy will come riding in on a white horse and save us. Or an attack helicopter. Do princes fly attack helicopters?"

"Better," Glad said. "He's friends with Sonic the Hedgehog."


	8. Chapter 8

Knuckles's dream was similar to Glad's.

It seemed that he stood on Angel Island's shore, gazing up at Perfect Chaos as the water monster reared over him. But inside the pillar of water supporting the head was Gladiolus, desperately floundering, trying to swim free.

Knuckles reached for her, trying to catch her outstretched hand, but she was just beyond reach. She was drowning slowly before his eyes, her long hair floating around her in a cloud.

"You will not save her that way," Chaos roared in his mind. "You must marry her, fool!"

The monster crashed down on him in a wave of darkness. Knuckles awoke, panting, heart racing. He lay there, staring at the underside of the bunk above him. "It was only a dream. It doesn't mean anything." But he had a horrible sense that it had been far more than that. Glad was in danger, and Perfect Chaos knew it. Was the monster trying to warn him?

Knuckles got up and put on his shoes. The athletic tape on his hands should have been cut off last night, but he had been too tired to bother. No time now.

He went straight to the Master Emerald chamber to pick up the chaos emerald. He'd teleport to Eggman's base, sneak inside, find Glad, and escape. He was so focused on planning exactly which spot he was going to teleport to, he didn't notice Sonic sitting on the pyramid steps until he nearly stepped on him.

"Morning, Knux," Sonic said.

Knuckles jumped. "Where'd you come from?"

Sonic rolled his eyes. He was eating a breakfast burrito wrapped in a napkin, and the smell of chorizo made Knuckles's mouth water.

"I'm making sure you don't do something stupid."

"I'm going to Eggman's to find Glad," Knuckles said.

Sonic pointed at him with the burrito. "See, that's stupid."

"She's in trouble!" Knuckles exclaimed. "I had this dream. They're going to kill her!"

"Yeah, I know." Sonic grimaced. "Let's think this through. Amy and I were up early, figuring this out."

Knuckles wanted to snarl and argue, but he had the sense not to. He wasn't at his best right now, and he needed the support of his friends.

"I'm good at fighting Eggman," Sonic said. "I also know his base pretty well. He was building a new wing all last year, and I bet you ten bucks that that's where they have Glad. You know those scientists would hook up with him. And if they didn't, he'd be after them for being his competition."

"Okay," Knuckles said. "Get to the point."

Sonic indicated himself with a thumb. "I'll go to Eggman's base. Tails, Amy, and Sticks will be my backup. You fly Angel Island up there and threaten Eggman with the ARK cannon."

"But it broke the power grid," Knuckles said. "It won't fire until Tails repairs it."

"Eggman doesn't know that," Sonic said with a mischievous grin.

The audacity of this plan filtered into Knuckles's head. "You want me to fly the island up there like some kind of battleship?"

"That's what it is, isn't it?" Sonic said. "I'll sneak into the base. If I can't get Glad out myself, I can find out where she is. Angel Island sitting there will make Eggy and his friends sweat, especially if they think we'll blow a hole in them like we did the Fellstorm."

This plan appealed to Knuckles more and more. "They might actually give her back just to buy us off."

"Now you're catching on," Sonic said. "Go grab breakfast. I've got to brief everybody else, too. Today, Angel Island goes to war."

* * *

The black robot stood in the maintenance station, supported by cables and hooks. The red lights lighting it from beneath gave it a hellish look, like a demon rising from the depths of the abyss.

Eggman stood nearby, running through the robot's initial boot up diagnostics. An older, balding man stood beside him, wearing similar spectacles and a mustache, although his was white with age.

"The technology has certainly moved fast," said the visitor. "Does this weighted table mean that the AI actually has a personality?"

"The way the neural networks function, yes," Eggman said. "I can adjust the basic weights, but the neural nets control the decision-making."

The visitor harrumphed. "You gave an assassin free will? You'll wake up dead one of these mornings."

"It's not an assassin," Eggman said. "This is Hazard, my new right hand. I've built him with an overdeveloped sense of honor. He owes me a life debt for creating him, which will keep him loyal. And he doesn't take kindly to insults, so Sonic will have to watch out."

"Yes, yes," the visitor said. "If it's not meant to kill people, then what's it for?"

"Defense," Eggman replied. "I can't have people waltzing in here and messing with the new GUN projects. Their base won't be ready for months, and it's up to me to provide security."

The visitor shrugged. "Fair enough. When will you power it up?"

"Now." Eggman pressed a green button on his console.

The robot's orange eyes flicked on. The sharp-fingered hands twitched in their supports. It lifted its head and looked at them. From this angle, it looked like a new version of Metal Sonic, but with six spikes on the back of its head, not three. The limbs and body were thicker, heavier, unlike Metal Sonic's lightweight frame. This robot's whole body was gleaming black with an orange triangle on its forehead.

"You didn't vary the design much," the visiting scientist said.

Eggman shrugged. "It's hard to improve on perfection." He addressed the robot. "Hazard. Status?"

"All systems nominal," the robot replied in a smooth, masculine voice. He sounded almost real, but with a slight electronic quality that betrayed his robot nature.

Eggman retracted the supports, and Hazard stood on his own for the first time. He flexed his arms and knees, then carefully stepped out of the maintenance station, lifting and lowering one limb at a time. Finally he stood before Eggman and his visitor, his orange eyes scanning their faces. He identified Dr. Eggman and bowed. "It is my pleasure to serve you, Master."

"Glad to hear it," Eggman said. "Come with me. I'll show you the base you'll be protecting."

* * *

Shadow walked through the jungle on the north side of Angel Island.

While the forests on the rest of the island were of various sizes and had sustained damage from robots, the north end held the oldest jungle of all. For three hundred years the trees had grown, undisturbed. Now they were giants, living pillars holding up a distant green canopy. The lack of sunlight kept the undergrowth to a minimum. Shadow walked along over a carpet of dead leaves, avoiding the reaching roots of the immense trees.

When he had let the Speaker assign him to the Angel Island crew, it had poured memories into his mind. It had showed him numbers of new chaos powers, along with glimpses of people performing them with various kinds of chaos crystal. It had also showed him a tower deep in the jungle. This was the Sanctum of Chaos Wizards, set apart for their study from the bustle of the palace. Distant and lonely, it appealed to the black hedgehog.

When Shadow was young, he had known only sterile walls, floors, and ceilings. When he escaped the lab and set foot outside for the first time, it had been like entering Eden. For months afterward, the hedgehog would stand, mesmerized by the rolling breakers of the sea, or sunbeams slanting through the forest, or the detail of a tiny flower, or the activity of a bird among the branches. Walking through this huge old forest on Angel Island gave him the same feeling of awe and wonder.

The magic of Angel Island had been at work on him for weeks. Shadow had resisted it, hating the island because he hated its crew. He resented it for taking Maria from him, binding her to the Master Emerald in such a way that she would never leave it. Yet sometimes, when he was alone and brooding, he would glimpse something that slipped through his armor-a butterfly with wings of flashing blue, or a great hawk scooping a fish from a river, or an insect hovering in a sunbeam, its wings a golden mist. These things sent stabs of joy and wonder through his heart.

The Speaker had done his best to peel Shadow's armor back entirely. Now Shadow was laid open to the island's full beauty and peace. As he picked his way through the forest, he paused to rest a hand on a mossy trunk. "These are mine now," Shadow told himself, testing the words.

His. He had never owned anything of value before. He had lived most of his life in a tree house he'd built himself, sleeping in a hammock, scraping together a living where he could, eschewing luxuries like electricity or running water.

But now, he had a home. Home! It was such a foreign concept. Home was where you were welcomed and loved. The only person who had ever cared for him had been Maria, and she had been repeatedly taken from him. But maybe he could find belonging here.

He came to a clearing in the forest and stopped, fresh joy rising in him. The clearing was artificial. Here stood the Wizard's tower in a circle of paved stone. A stone henge ringed it, some of the great stones toppled long ago and tangled in tree roots. But most of the stones were set with chaos crystal, green and blue, glowing in patterns. They had kept the jungle from invading. Not a weed marred the pavement around the tower.

The tower itself was about four stories tall, buttressed with gleaming black stone. The roof was green shingle. Instead of being in ruins, it looked as if someone had left it only the day before. Like it was waiting for an Island Wizard to return.

Shadow crossed the barrier of standing stones and stepped onto the white pavement. A sense of belonging filled him. This was right. This was where he needed to be. A little distrustful of such feelings, he tried the tower door. The latch lifted easily.

Inside, he found a great round room with a circular staircase winding up and up. This bottom room had a wide fireplace with a chimney that extended upward along the tower's entire height. Shelves had once lined the walls, but age had taken its toll and many had rotted and fallen down. Shadow stepped delicately among the mess and lifted a toppled book. The pages crackled as he opened it. The old, musty pages contained sketches of chaos crystal, and detailed diagrams of the stances needed to work certain powers.

Carrying the book, Shadow climbed the circular staircase, testing his footing. The stairs creaked, but held steady. They brought him to another room the same size as the first. This one had arcane circles burned into the wood floor. Here the shelves seemed to have fared better, for only a few of them had rotted from their supports. These held chaos crystal in six different colors, each color assigned its own shelf. The radiation from them had warmed the room a little, and Shadow found that he could taste it on the back of his tongue-a slightly bitter, spicy taste, like black pepper.

This was a workroom, then. A place where a person could experiment with chaos powers without fear of hurting anyone. Possibly, the stones outside would contain excess chaos power in case of experiments gone awry-he would have to learn to read the engravings.

His mind whirling with possibilities, Shadow climbed the stairs to the top floor. Here was a living space under the tower's pointed roof. It was empty, but scrapes along the plastered walls showed where furniture had been. The floor was stained in places where the roof had leaked-he would have to repair it. But already he was planning. He'd bring his belongings out here-this place suited him much better than the space he had been building in the palace. Shadow's tower. The name pleased him. It was his own space to arrange how he liked. A place to learn and practice and live and rest.

For the first time in his life, Shadow had come home.


	9. Chapter 9

Gladiolus sat up in bed.

The locked door to the hospital room was opening at last, and lights flickered on overhead. On the next bed, the hedgehog Rigel, who was sunflower yellow, rolled over and faked sleep.

Dr. Lewis Gunther and another white-haired man stepped in, dressed in identical blue scrubs.

"Hello, Gladiolus," said Dr. Gunther. "I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Gerald Robotnik."

Glad studied him. Gerald Robotnik looked like an older Eggman-same facial structure, same mustache, same tiny glasses. He studied Glad with frank curiosity.

"Nice to meet you," Glad said. "Are you related to Eggman?"

"I'm his grandfather," Gerald replied. "And you ... you are Amaryllis's daughter."

Glad nodded.

"May I?" Gerald said. When Glad nodded, he touched her long dreadlocks, gently lifting the thick, stiff ones in back. "Look how perfectly the genes transferred to the next generation! I hadn't realized they'd be so dominant."

"She's perfect," Dr. Lewis said. "Do you realize, Gladiolus, that your hair would allow you to glide through the air like a kite?"

"Yes," Glad said. "I've been practicing, actually."

The scientists exchanged an excited look. "Excellent!" Dr. Lewis exclaimed. "We could start the strength training tomorrow, if she was ready. Let's see how that eye is doing."

He donned a pair of gloves and gently peeled off the bandage over Glad's chaos eye. She felt the air touch her eyelids and eyeball, but saw no sparks, no auras. There was nothing but blackness now.

Dr. Lewis shone a light into the blind eye and asked Glad a few questions-does it hurt? What do you see? What changed from before?

She answered them with mixed feelings. She had been able to see chaos auras for so long, it had almost seemed an acceptable trade for real eyesight. Now even that was gone, leaving her with darkness on the left side. But then, the headache was gone, too. No pain. No swelling or fever. That was a relief all by itself.

"You know," Dr. Gerald said, tapping a finger against his lips. "She's in such good condition after that procedure, she could be a spokeswoman for GUN. Imagine how stirring her testimony would be to a panel of investors."

Glad's stomach leaped, then knotted. "Wh-what do you mean?"

Dr. Lewis said enthusiastically, "You're a model patient, Gladiolus! We can show the world how effective our treatments are. And since you're also second-generation, the world can see what it looks like to have Ancient traits brought forward. You're amazing."

"What does that mean?" Glad asked. "Travel?"

"Oh yes," Dr. Gerald said. "You'd travel all over the world. You'd be a celebrity, have the finest accommodations everywhere you go."

These promises aligned so perfectly with her own secret dreams that Glad was almost convinced right there. But a corner of her mind doubted them. "What about the curse?"

Gerald and Lewis's smiles wavered. "What curse?"

"The blood curse on the descendants of Solaris," Glad said. "If we touch chaos crystal, we gain power, and then the power rots us away."

"Preposterous," Gerald snorted. "There's no such thing as blood curses."

"Who told you this pack of lies, anyway?" Dr. Lewis said.

Glad looked down. "Another echidna." She didn't want to out Knuckles by name, and she didn't want to mention the statue in the jungle. Not to these men. Somehow, it would be wrong for them to know about sacred things when they didn't even believe in curses.

"Well, that echidna was misinformed," Dr. Gerald said. "All chaos infections reoccur eventually. That's why this treatment is so important. It just extended your lifespan by ten years. Probably more than that."

Or they could break the curse. But confronted with such assured skepticism, Glad doubted herself and Knuckles. What if they were wrong? What if it was only an infection, not a curse? What if marrying him didn't solve anything, but she continued having headaches until she died? Whereas staying with GUN meant they could treat her eye whenever it flared up.

"May I have some time to think about this?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Gerald said. "In the meantime, let's try you on the strength training. Maybe we can get you gliding sooner rather than later."

"Can I have my clothes back?" Glad asked. Hopefully the headset was still in the pocket of her jacket.

"I'll send a nurse in with them," Dr. Lewis said.

The two excused themselves and left. Glad sat there, fiddling with the front of her hospital gown, disconcerted. "Rigel, what do you think I should do?"

The yellow hedgehog sat up. In the strong light, Rigel's fur gleamed with a golden sheen, beautiful and strange. Her expression was sober. "Don't believe them."

"Why not?" Glad said. "I mean, they fixed my eye."

"You're blind now," Rigel replied. "What did they really fix?"

"The headache," Glad said. "The infection."

Rigel shrugged. "Maybe they helped that. But you see this?" She lifted her right hand, which had been resting out of sight in her lap. It was maimed, the fingers half-curled together. The fur grew only in patches around old scar tissue. "They wanted to cut my hand off and replace it with a robot one."

Glad stared. "What happened to you?"

"Accident on a crab boat," Rigel said, looking at her hand sadly. "At least I'm alive. The point is, these people are bonkers. Don't trust them."

"They didn't cut it off, though," Glad pointed out. "They gave you a choice."

Rigel raised an eyebrow. "They haven't let me go, either."

At this point a nurse arrived with Glad's clothes in a plastic bag. He left, and Glad slipped into the restroom to change.

She checked her eye in the mirror as she dressed. The pupil had lost its blue color, and the angry, inflamed veins around the iris had vanished. She looked normal. Her damaged eye didn't look blind.

That dream, though ... It had remained clear in her memory, instead of fading, the way dreams usually did. Chaos had sounded affronted. "You cannot defeat me that way!"

Had the chaos laser treatment been some kind of assault on Chaos's power? What if the monster himself came to take revenge? She shivered, looking at the walls and ceiling, imagining water spurting from the faucet and shower, filling the rooms, forming into a huge dragon head ...

Her jacket was at the bottom of the bag, and the headset was still in the pocket. They hadn't thought her belongings important enough to frisk. She hadn't offered any resistance, so why should they?

She put on the headset and flicked it on. "Anybody there?"

She knew she was out of range of Angel Island. There was no way anybody could hear her. So she jumped when Sonic's voice said, "Who is that? Glad?"

"Sonic!" Glad said, delighted. "You must be close!"

"Yeah, I'm right outside Eggman's base," Sonic replied. "He's really beefed up security. Do you know what area you're in?"

Glad looked helplessly at the walls. "A hospital wing?"

"That new area," Sonic muttered. "It's right on the edge of a cliff. I don't see any doors or windows, even. We'll have to sneak through the main base."

"Be careful," Glad said. "There's a ton of people here. Dr. Lewis is here, and Eggman's grandfather, Gerald Robotnik."

"Eggman has a grandpa who's still alive?" Sonic exclaimed. "The dude must be a living fossil!"

Amy's voice said, "Be careful, everyone. You know what's at stake here."

Gosh, they had all showed up. Touched, Glad said, "Is Knuckles there?"

"No, he's driving Angel Island up here," Sonic said. "We're here to rescue you, Glad. And if we can't do it, we're going to blow crap up with the ARK cannon."

They'd gone to all that trouble for her? Glad unexpectedly found a lump in her throat. It was a moment before she could speak. "I'm not really in trouble."

"Oh yeah?" Sonic said. "Have you tried to leave?"

"N-no ..."

"Go on, try it. We'll wait for you. If you're not a prisoner, you should be out in a few minutes."

"Okay." Glad put her headset in her pocket without turning it off, so her friends could hear any developments. She pulled on her boots, then stepped back into the hospital room. "Rigel, I'm going to try to leave."

The yellow hedgehog sprang out of bed immediately. "Take me with you." She gathered her own hospital gown together and tied it in a knot at her hip, turning it into an almost-stylish shirt. She used the first two fingers of her maimed hand, holding her wrist at an odd angle.

Glad looked at her doubtfully. "Do you think we can sneak out without being noticed? I'm not really a prisoner, but you ..."

"I'm definitely a prisoner," Rigel said. "I also have depth perception, and you don't. Come on."

Glad tried the door and found it unlocked. She cracked it open and peered out.

The hallway outside struck her as wrong, somehow. It certainly wasn't a hospital. It was far too wide, with odd recessed lighting in a groove in the ceiling. The floor was loose, temporary steel plates set over bare dirt. And instead of people moving around, she saw only robots. Eggman's humanoid attack robots, striding in pairs up and down the hallway.

"Told you," Rigel said, peering over her shoulder.

"We'll just sneak by when there's a gap," Glad said. "Ready, and ... go!"

They crept out between patrols, matching their pace to the speed of the robots fifty feet ahead of them. Rigel followed Glad, who had no idea where she was going. She had been brought to this area while unconscious, and before that, she'd been blinded by a headache.

They reached a junction. Rigel nudged Glad in the back. "Straight on." So Glad went on, thankful that at least one of them knew where they were going. They passed several closed doors this time. At the far end of the hall was a huge sealed vault door with a wheel instead of a handle.

"This way?" Glad said doubtfully.

"Yes," Rigel replied, seizing the wheel. "Beyond this is Eggman's fortress."

Glad helped her turn the wheel, wondering why such a huge door separated the hospital part from the rest of the base. Did Eggman expect monsters to try to escape?

The mechanism clunked inside the door, and it slowly swung open. Glad peeked through. Beyond was a portion of a room with white paneled walls. That was all she could see.

Rigel looked through, too. "Looks clear. Come on."

While Rigel stepped through, Glad put her headset back on. "Sonic? We're moving into Eggman's base proper."

"Oh good," Sonic said. "Watch out for all the security robots. I'm inside and it's nuts."

Glad and Rigel walked out of the white-paneled room, entered a hallway, and immediately encountered a pair of guard robots. "Halt!" one of them barked.

"Scatter!" Rigel said, darting away down an adjoining hallway. Glad ran the other way. The robots split up, one pursuing each of them.

Glad was a good runner from so much hard manual labor, but her depth perception was nil. She smacked into a door she was reaching for, turned a corner too early and bruised her shoulder, and fell over the top of a beetle robot that happened to roll by at the wrong moment. While her chaos eye was unpredictable, sometimes it had still given her a sense of depth. She missed it as she scrambled to her feet.

"Sonic, I don't know where I am!"

"Is that you crashing around?" Sonic said, sounding amused. "A buttload of robots just went to investigate. I'll be there in a minute."

That didn't sound good. Glad looked up in time to see twenty robots pour into her hall way and flood toward her. After them came Sonic, bouncing on their backs in a spiky ball and destroying them from behind.

Glad scrunched herself into a tiny alcove that contained pipes and a meter. She closed her eyes, shielded her face, and waited for something terrible to happen.

There was a terrific clatter and crashing, then silence. Glad opened her eye. Sonic was crouched in the middle of shattered robot bits, staring at something down the hall. Glad looked, too.

A black robot like Metal Sonic was stalking toward them. It was bigger than Metal Sonic, and somehow looked more muscular. Its eyes were orange, and it sported an orange triangle on its forehead.

"What is that?" Glad breathed.

"New robot," Sonic said. He touched his headset. "New robot, guys. Eggman replaced Metal Sonic with his big ugly brother. He's coming right at us."

"Get out of there, Sonic!" Tails exclaimed over their channel.

The blue hedgehog looked at the echidna. "Run. I'll hold him off."

Glad bolted. Sonic ran the other way, straight at the metal hedgehog. There was a crash and a series of thumps. Sonic cursed.

The hallway ended in a huge room with skylights, several doors, and a fountain in the middle of the floor. It looked like the entry to a corporate building. There was a pair of grand doors, and Glad ran toward them.

She was halfway there when something struck her in the back and knocked her down. She rolled to a halt, the wind knocked out of her lungs, wondering if her back was broken.

The black metal hedgehog paced toward her. One fist had detached and was slowly reeling itself back into the robot's wrist on a cable. The robot's other hand dragged an unconscious Sonic by one ankle.

Glad stared at the robot in horror. He had punched her in the back from a distance, and had incapacitated Sonic within a few seconds.

"Sonic! Glad!" Amy was saying. "What's happening? Where are you?"

Glad struggled to breathe. "We're caught," she choked.

The black hedgehog reattached his fist and aimed it at Glad. She cowered and held up both hands.

"A wise move," the robot said. "At this range, my rocket fist would break your skull."

"What did you do to Sonic?" she panted.

The robot's orange eyes flicked toward the blue hedgehog. "Stunner. He'll be awake soon." He grabbed Glad's nearest arm. "Come with me and I won't do the same to you."

Glad did, horrified by the robot's strength. It was at least as strong as Knuckles, but different. While Knuckles had worked to build his strength, this robot had it built in, the power of hydraulics and gears.

Conscious that Amy, Tails, and Sticks were listening, Glad said, "Who are you?"

"I am Hazard," the robot replied. "Defender of Dr. Eggman and all he possesses."

They passed under a particularly bright light. Something about the way Hazard's black armor gleamed in reddish highlights triggered a memory in Glad's mind. "Are you made of hepatizon?"

"Plated," Hazard replied. "I'm surprised you knew what it was."

Glad hung her head, feeling sick. "I'm the one who found it in the first place."

"You have my thanks," Hazard replied. "I am immune to chaos power."

Amy gasped a little over the headset. Otherwise there was silence. Glad walked along, her back hurting from the blow, and her heart hurting at her part in creating this new, unstoppable robot.

To her surprise, instead of prison, Hazard merely returned her to her hospital room. By this time he was carrying Sonic over one shoulder, the hedgehog's head and legs dangling. Hazard waved Glad into her room, then locked the door behind her.

Rigel was already there, sitting cross-legged on her bed. "He caught you too, huh?"

Glad rubbed the small of her back. "Yes. Knocked me down. He caught Sonic."

Rigel winced. "That's bad."

Glad sat on her bed, head hanging. "I'm a failure. I just ... surrendered."

"You can't fight that robot," Rigel said. "I tried. It's like trying to wrestle a tractor." She straightened, looking at the door. "Here comes Gunther. We're in trouble now."

Glad faced her reckoning with her head up and shoulders squared. She might be a coward when it came to robots, but she would not cringe before a human.

* * *

 

Late that night, Glad lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Rigel hadn't come back from the lab yet. Glad had been there all day, running on treadmills and practicing gliding in front of a huge fan. Every muscle ached, and the bruise in her back was its own bundle of pain.

She wore her headset in the hopes that one of her friends would respond, but there was only silence. Had they all been captured? Had Amy, Tails, and Sticks gone away?

She had hidden the headset in her jacket pocket, as usual, and nobody had found it. Dr. Lewis Gunther had been more amused than upset at her escape attempt. He assured her that she would be free to leave when they were finished testing. After all, a reoccurrence of the chaos eye might be fatal, with all that she had been through.

"I don't even know why I bother," she muttered aloud into the mic. "I just hope somebody out there is listening. I hope Sonic is all right. I hope everybody is."

"Glad?" Knuckles's voice said.

She tensed. "Knuckles? Are you here?"

"I'm on Angel Island," he said. "I finally got the repeater working for our headsets. Tails built it, but he didn't have time to set it up."

Glad relaxed and fought the sudden urge to cry. His voice was so calming, reassuring. A hard bundle of fear under her ribs melted a little. "Don't come to Eggman's. There's a new Metal Sonic that is super strong. It captured Sonic when he tried to rescue me."

"What about the others?"

"I don't know."

"They never checked in." Knuckles was quiet for a moment, considering this. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. They treated my eye."

"They did? How?"

Glad described the laser surgery and how it had blinded her entirely, but stopped the headache.

Knuckles said nothing for such a long time that Glad feared she'd lost the connection. "Are you there?"

"Yeah. Just thinking." He hesitated, then went on, "I had this dream. With Perfect Chaos. He was really mad and said that I couldn't save you that way. I didn't know what he meant."

"Scary," Glad murmured. "I had the same dream. Except he said that I could not defeat him that way."

"You know what this means?" Knuckles said. "I think Perfect Chaos put a bit of himself into the Solaris bloodline. Like, in the water part of the blood. So if you mess with the curse, he knows."

"How could he do that?" Glad said.

Knuckles's shrug was almost audible. "He's made of water. I imagine he could spread bits of himself across the whole world, if he wanted. The point is, he knows what's going on. And he's mad."

Glad shivered. "That's freaky. The scientists don't believe in curses." She paused, thinking. "They said that I'm amazing. They want me to be the spokeswoman for GUN."

"What?" Knuckles said, very quietly.

"They want me to travel around and show people how they fixed my eye. It's to impress investors or something. Knuckles, they're really nice to me. I think Shadow was wrong about them."

"Huh," Knuckles said. "I suppose it's possible." He sounded troubled.

She went on, "They want to keep treating my infection whenever it reoccurs. They said they're extending my lifespan. So ... I might have to stay here."

"Glad," Knuckles breathed. "Do you hear yourself right now? This is GUN we're talking about."

"Yeah, and they're very kind people."

Knuckles started to speak a couple of times, then stopped.

"I guess we can't get married, then," Glad said. The words sounded cold and hollow, and a pain she didn't understand spread through her. "Not if this treatment works, I mean."

"But," Knuckles said, sounding lost, "treatment makes Chaos mad. And marriage is the only way to break the curse."

It was Glad's turn to fall silent, pondering the ramifications. Lewis and Gerald had made her question the curse, the nature of her sickness, everything. Even though she still mostly believed in the curse, they had given her doubts.

When Knuckles spoke again, it was with that bitter tone he had used after the Fellstorm had been defeated, the tone that grated on her ears and hurt her heart. "Well. I guess you won't need a rescue then. Not if you're GUN's newest employee. I still have to bail out my friends, so if you change your mind, let me know."

"I might," Glad snapped. She didn't mean to snap, but she just hated that tone so much. "Or maybe you'll get captured, too. Then we'll all be one happy GUN family."

"Oh yeah," Knuckles said, his bitterness broadening into sarcasm. "I just love being stabbed with needles and injected with chemicals. That's totally the life I want."

"That's not what they're doing," Glad said. "I only got hurt because I went into Eggman's base. And if this is how you're going to act, I don't want to talk to you."

"Fine," he said. "Go hang out with your crazy scientist friends. You don't need me."

She clicked off the headset and sat there, breathing hard and wanting to punch something.


	10. Chapter 10

Knuckles did punch something-his fist met the stone doorway with enough force to crack the lintel. Then he flung himself into the swivel chair in Angel Island's control room and glared at the screens without seeing them.

GUN had fed Gladiolus a heaping helping of lies, and she had eaten it up. Well, who wouldn't? A poor girl from a poor family, suddenly being promised fame and fortune? Of course she had fallen for it. They'd spin her any kind of story to keep her under their thumb. She was descended from one of their monsters, and they wanted to own her.

But could he say any of that? No. She'd hung up on him, which was tricky to do with a multi-channel headset. He threw his head back and roared at the ceiling. Nobody would hear him except Ramussan and Metal Sonic. The rest of his friends were in that place, too. He had to go to Eggman's volcanic island whether he wanted to or not. And their rescue attempt had been in vain. Glad didn't want to be rescued, after all. She wanted to be the petted lapdog of GUN, scoring them big money by showing off her amazingly healed chaos eye.

Meanwhile, what was happening to Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Sticks? Were they being injected and irradiated and who knew what else? The idea sickened him. Not to mention there was a new robot to deal with who had taken Sonic down. That was horrifying by itself.

Knuckles jumped up and paced out of the control room, across the main hall, down to the Master Emerald chamber, and back up to the control room. The island felt so empty. Visiting the Master Emerald only made him aware of it, made him think of assassins and bullets and falling down stone stairs.

He crashed back into the swivel chair and looked at the screens. Angel Island was traveling at a steady fifteen knots, following the Bygone Island coast. Ramussan was driving flawlessly. But at this pace, they wouldn't reach Eggman's base until late tomorrow. Anything could happen before then.

A footstep rasped in the hall. Knuckles jumped. Shadow stood outside, examining the cracked doorway.

"What do you want?" Knuckles growled, standing up.

The black hedgehog pointed at his own ear, indicating the headset there. "I grabbed one of these a while ago. Kind of amusing, listening to you get yourselves into mess after mess."

Ack, he had overheard the fight with Glad. Embarrassment made Knuckles angrier. "So what? It's none of your business. You should leave the island before I remodel the palace with your face."

Shadow held up a mocking finger. "Now, now. You wouldn't attack your own crew, would you?"

"You're not crew."

Shadow stepped into the control room and pressed a hand to the golden access plate on the console. A screen changed to show a profile for Shadow the hedgehog, island crew. Title: Wizard.

Knuckles wilted back into his chair. He didn't know if he was flabbergasted that Shadow had actually joined, or disappointed that he couldn't beat him up properly. Probably both. "Why?" he asked.

Shadow shrugged. "Lots of reasons. Mainly because Maria asked me to."

"So I can't break your jaw now," Knuckles said. "And you can't abandon me and hope a monster kills me."

Shadow smirked and folded his arms. "You're still mad about that? I apologized."

"Not that it counted for much," Knuckles growled. "So. You're crew. You know the hot water we're in. Thoughts?"

The black hedgehog stood there for a moment, smiling a mean smile. "Sonic took the chaos emerald with him, didn't he?"

Knuckles nodded, and slapped a hand to his face. "That means GUN has it."

"Right." Shadow looked at the screen showing the island's travel. "You know what happened the last time Lewis Gunther got his claws on a chaos emerald?" He ran a hand over the red stripe on top of his head. "They made me."

Knuckles's eyes followed the gesture. "You're made of chaos crystal?"

"It's under my skin," Shadow said. "Powdered. I don't need crystal to chaos control because I have it inside me."

"Gross," Knuckles said. "And painful."

"Yes," Shadow said contemplatively. "They'll probably try something similar with Sonic. Why have a hedgehog when you can have a weapon?"

The thought made Knuckles want to both throw up and violently break something.

"But hey, he'll only be there until Angel Island arrives," Shadow said with a grin. "They won't have time. My procedure took two years. No, you have a whole different set of problems, echidna."

Knuckles folded his own arms and glared. "Like what?"

Shadow made his voice high and feminine. "GUN are nice people, Knuckles."

Knuckles raised one fist.

"She said it," Shadow said. His smirk vanished for the first time. "You have no idea how insidious they are. Oh, very kind. Very caring. They make you think you're doing them a favor while they siphon away your blood and change it and pour it back into you. I didn't even realize what they were like until I'd been on my own a few years."

"So it's brainwashing," Knuckles said, sitting up and resting his elbows on his knees.

"Yes." Shadow pulled up the other chair and sat down. "You have to get Glad out of there."

"But she doesn't want me to," Knuckles said. This conversation had hit a new level he'd never had with Shadow. For the first time, the hedgehog had dropped his scornful mask and turned serious. Maybe it was the effect of being island crew.

"You love her, don't you?" Shadow snapped. "She doesn't understand what they're doing. She's incapable of asking for help. You have to rescue her before she'll understand that she needs rescue."

Knuckles threw his hands above his head. "But you heard her! She's done with me. Technology fixed her chaos eye and she doesn't need me anymore."

"Doesn't make the curse any less real," Shadow pointed out. "So what if she's done? You can't leave her to GUN. If you love her, you'll do what's best for her. And if that means taking her back to Pilings and never seeing her again, that's her choice, isn't it?"

The words were bitter, but true. Knuckles tried to argue against it, tried to fight and reason. But he did love her. Maybe even enough to let her go away and die quietly from her curse. He dropped his head into one hand.

"It's no worse than what I've gone through with Maria," Shadow said in a low voice.

"It's nothing like that," Knuckles said.

"Yes it is." Shadow's spines bristled. "She was the only good thing in that laboratory. They took her away and plugged her into the Master Emerald. I have her voice in my head." He tapped a temple. "Fifty years, she spoke to me. I knew she was alive. Wait, she told me. I'm not ready yet. Wait. So I waited for her. And who saved her? You."

Knuckles lifted his head and bared his teeth. "She was dying, Shadow. The Master Emerald interceded for her. I had to get her out of that tube before Eggman did. Where were you?"

"I was waiting!" Shadow snarled back. "She should have called for me! Instead, she got you. And she loves you, you unworthy wretch."

"She loves you more," Knuckles snapped. "I'm just a battery. Who does she sit with at meals? You. Who does she appear all the time for? You."

Shadow looked away, shoulders hunched.

"Gladiolus is not Maria," Knuckles said. "Like you said, it's my duty to save her. After that ... well, she has to choose."

"Maria chose this," Shadow said in a low voice. "Being part of Angel Island. So I had to choose it, too."

"Because you love her," Knuckles said.

Shadow nodded. "And it's been horribly hard, echidna. You may have to watch Gladiolus die, and that will be horrible, too. But you can't force people to love you. They have to have a choice."

Knuckles swiveled away from Shadow to watch the monitors. After a while he said, "When did you get so much wisdom?"

"Half a century of suffering," Shadow replied.

Knuckles forced a grin. "Right. So, tell me. What's a Chaos Wizard do?"

* * *

Sonic knew he was sedated before he'd awakened properly.

The trouble was, he couldn't awaken properly. His whole body felt warm and heavy, and he couldn't quite get his eyes open. Voices spoke nearby and people moved around him. He lay there and lazily, slowly, thought about the situation.

Fact: he was pretty comfortable right now.

Fact: he was probably under some serious drugs.

Conclusion: that meant he was in crazy danger and couldn't do a thing about it.

He lay there and tried to make sense of the voices. The least he could do was keep tabs on what they were plotting. At the moment, it was a lot of soft muttering, like their backs were turned. After a while they became clearer.

"But look at how those particular gene pairs turned out. Dr. Eggman says that he's clocked the hedgehog running at five hundred miles per hour. Across water!"

_Oh yeah, I did do that_ , Sonic thought, smiling. _Five hundred, that's awesome._

Another voice said, "Not to mention the coloration. What sort of alteration must have happened to the pigmentation to generate blue melanin?"

"It's not actually melanin ... the keratin structure of his spines is entirely unique. It scatters light like a peacock feather and we see it as blue."

"What team is responsible for that?"

"We're not sure. It may have been an accidental combination of several factors ..."

The conversation passed into technical terminology. Sonic dozed, wrapped in his sedated cocoon, unable to worry about anything.

A new voice roused him from his stupor. "Sonic! What's wrong with him?"

A frightened, female voice. Not Amy. Sonic cracked an eyelid.

Gladiolus stood nearby, staring at him in horror, her long dreadlocks cascading around her. Funny, she wasn't wearing her eyepatch, and her ruined eye looked fine. A human in a lab coat tugged at her arm, trying to usher her away, but Glad refused to move.

"He's been sedated," a scientist grudgingly admitted.

"Why?" Glad cried.

"He's dangerous, miss," the one in the lab coat said. "Please come this way."

She finally let them lead her away, staring over her shoulder at him. Sonic watched her go. At least she looked okay. What about Amy? And Tails? And Sticks?

He managed to roll his head sideways to look around. He was strapped to a bed in a small room. No friends in sight. Nothing he could do to escape, not pumped full of sedatives like this.

"Knux," he thought, "I hope you don't get caught, too ..."

* * *

Stricken, Gladiolus followed Dr. Lewis Gunther down the hall. Sonic had been lying there, strapped to a table, a glint of heavily glazed eye showing. At first she thought he was dead. "What will they do to him?"

Dr. Lewis waved his condor-headed cane. "Nothing for now. We must study his genome to find out what parts of our work passed down. He's a fascinating puzzle, that one."

They walked by other closed doors. Glad glanced at each one. Did they conceal Amy, Tails, and Sticks? Where had Rigel disappeared to?

"Sonic doesn't need to be here," Glad said as they stepped into the therapy room. "He's not sick the way I am."

Dr. Lewis smiled, showing crooked teeth. "Who said he was sick? He's here so we can study him. The fact that so many of our experiments survived to reproduce shows that we had struck gold. And these Ancient traits carried on to the next generation! Such amazing powers! We can engineer an entire race of superpowered beings."

He indicated a chair, and Glad sat down. "Why?" she asked. "Why do you want that?"

Dr. Lewis's smile flickered. "Purely research, Gladiolus. Curiosity. Man's thirst for knowledge drives him to impossible lengths."

Glad's gaze fell to the condor head on his cane. The head of a carrion bird that fattened itself upon death. Whatever use Dr. Lewis had planned for his experiments, he would benefit immensely.

She looked around the room. Aside from a row of chairs and cabinets, the room also contained a centrifuge like a huge wheel. It was alien and somehow threatening.

Dr. Lewis pulled a rack of tiny vials out of a drawer, along with a coil of sterile plastic tubing and a syringe.

"What's that for?" Glad said, eying the collection.

"Just taking some blood samples," Dr. Lewis said. "We must see how the chaos infection is healing."

Glad hated needles. She stared at the wall as he took her blood. This wasn't so bad. She'd had blood drawn before. But panic beat deep in her heart-the thought of being drugged and strapped down, helpless as scientists cut pieces off her until there was nothing left.

"Will I be sedated like Sonic was?" Her voice trembled.

"Of course not," Dr. Lewis said without meeting her eye. "Sonic was sedated because his actions threatened to hurt the people responsible for him."

This didn't match what she knew of Sonic. He never hurt anyone with his speed, only robots. He'd attacked that black robot to give her time to escape, not realizing that it was too strong for him.

_Sonic is strapped to that table because of me._

The realization hurt her inside. She sat still, staring at the wall, feeling the vague pinching sensation of the needle in her arm. Abruptly it stopped and Dr. Lewis taped gauze over the tiny wound.

Ten vials of dark red blood stood there on the counter. Glad gazed at them in shock. Her blood, destined for a ride in the centrifuge, where Dr. Lewis would distill the secrets from her DNA. A weariness she hadn't anticipated crept in behind her eyes, making her head heavy. The world wavered.

"I'll send an orderly to your room with something to eat," Dr. Lewis said. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Here, drink this." He handed her a juice box.

Glad drank the juice, which made the world come slightly more into focus. But when she stood up, her knees threatened to buckle. "Why did you take so much blood?" she asked faintly, steadying herself against the chair.

Dr. Lewis caught her arm before she could fall. "We have many tests to run. Come on, I'll help you back to bed."

The hallway seemed to stretch for miles. Glad staggered along, dizzy and weak from blood loss. When they reached her room, she collapsed onto the bed. She was conscious of the click of the lock as Dr. Lewis locked her in.

GUN had showed their true colors at last. They couldn't conceal what they had done to Sonic. She was a prisoner and had only just realized it.

Knuckles had been right.

He had tried to warn her, but she hadn't listened. Now she lay here, missing a pint of blood, horror creeping through her. He had said that he would rescue everyone except her. What if he did exactly that, leaving her here to be cut up by scientists, because that's what she had wanted? No, surely he would be willing to make up. She'd been stupid. Naive, just like her aunt had said.

Or ... this thought was even more chilling ... what if he was captured, too? What if she one day walked by an open door and saw the big red echidna strapped down and drugged like Sonic? What might they do to him?

These awful thoughts running through her head, Glad slipped into a shallow doze, her weakened state dragging her down.

She thought she was standing on the beach outside Pilings. The waves were angry, lashing the rocks with a roar and a spout of white foam. One wave rose higher than the rest. It crested and hung in place, shaping itself into Perfect Chaos's dragon head.

"What do you want?" Glad whispered, quivering in dread.

The monster shook its head like a shark ripping up prey. "You dare to attempt to remove the curse with more chaos power? Foolish girl!"

"It's going to kill me!" Glad cried. "I had no choice!"

"It's supposed to kill you," Chaos snarled. "I told you how to break the curse. Yet you refuse to listen."

"But ... I'm afraid to marry Knuckles," Glad said sorrowfully. That was it. The reason she had so easily accepted GUN's offer. Chaos had laid bare her fear.

"He laid down his life for you," Chaos growled. "I know his measure. He is better than you deserve, spawn of Solaris. But since you have spurned the only thing that would save you ..."

Two tentacles made of water snaked out of the surf. At the end of each was a miniature dragon head, jaws open, filled with teeth. They clamped onto Glad's arms, the teeth sinking into her. She screamed and struggled, but the tentacles were as strong as the ocean itself.

"Let the curse progress!" Chaos thundered. "Let the infection spread! Let your body crystallize until it matches your cold, dead heart!"

Glad gasped and awoke, heart pounding. She immediately checked her arms. Nothing. No bites, no infection. Maybe it had only been a bad dream and not a vision. Maybe it hadn't actually been Perfect Chaos speaking to her, like last time.

She sat up and blinked.

Her blind eye could see chaos auras again. Instead of blackness, it saw cloudy gray with colored points of light in it. As she turned her head, she saw Sonic's brilliant blue shape through the walls, still strapped to its bed. But now she could also see Tails, Amy, and Sticks. Tails and Sticks were lying motionless like Sonic, but Amy was sitting up, curled in a ball, glowing a muted pink. A silvery shape that must be Rigel burned further away, pacing back and forth in a small space. Two more random lights burned nearby-chaos crystal?

Chaos had reactivated her curse. That meant her chaos eye worked again. Even as she looked around, she felt the old pain in her eye again, heavy and dragging. That had to be all he meant, right? Let the curse progress ... he'd brought her chaos eye back. The headaches would probably return, too. He meant her to die quickly.

Unless she married Knuckles anyway. _He is too good for you, spawn of Solaris_. For a monster to say such a thing meant that her fears were groundless. Her aunt's whispers were nothing but fear given voice. Glad's own instincts about Knuckles had been right all along-she had seen his actions, his friends, the responsibilities he carried without complaint. Far more than his words, his life spoke volumes about his character. Marrying him would be the best thing she ever did.

But did she even have time?

Fear gripped her-fear of death, fear of marriage, fear of the monster who could so easily inflict a curse upon someone.

A nurse arrived with a tray containing soup and a sandwich. Glad almost told him that she could see chaos auras again, but something stopped her. Further treatment would anger Chaos more. Plus, being able to see chaos energy through walls gave her an advantage that GUN didn't know about.

She ate her lunch and felt a tiny bit better. The blood loss weakness persisted. She tried to get up and check her eye in the mirror, but halfway to the restroom she toppled to the floor, the room spinning. She crawled back to bed and closed her eyes.

Glad awoke hours later from a dreamless sleep. She sat up, rubbing her chaos eye, which itched. Her arms itched, too. She scratched them and froze.

Square bumps stood up from her skin. They marked her forearms and the back of her hands, black beneath her skin and fur. And-square. Like dice. She prodded one. It was hard as bone.

Glad wanted to scream and scream. The curse had gotten worse, just as Chaos had said. The places where he had bitten her in the dream had the largest bumps, and they were spreading from there. To her chaos eye, they glowed a very faint red.

She sat there, breathing hard, looking at her arms over and over. If she screamed, she'd attract attention. Even though she wanted help, wanted reassurance, she couldn't let the scientists see her panicking. They'd sedate her and strap her to a table. Then they'd probably cut the bumps off to see what they were. They'd blast her with more chaos energy to try to heal her, which would enrage Chaos further.

They didn't believe in curses. They didn't respect Chaos, even after he'd destroyed their old lab and killed so many of them.

Glad groped for her jacket where it was crumpled beside her bed. The headset was still in the pocket, although the low battery light was on. She took a deep breath and put it on.


	11. Chapter 11

The setting sun painted Angel Island in shades of red and gold. Knuckles stood atop a cliff, facing the wind, watching the land and sea crawl by below them. Angel Island in motion was like riding the biggest airship ever. His heart thrilled at the motion, the changing scenery, the altitude.

The floating island had traveled along Bygone Island's eastern coast all day and were beginning to follow its curve northward. Eggman's island was a tiny hill on the horizon, barely distinguishable from the clouds around it. It would take another twelve hours to get there. Twelve very long hours.

"Ramussan," Knuckles said into his headset, "can't this rock go any faster?"

"Certainly," the AI replied. "However, this island weighs seventy million tons. It is traveling through the atmosphere with little friction. Past fifty knots, the inertia becomes ... difficult ... to halt."

Knuckles nodded. "Point." He hadn't thought about the enormous weight of the island, or the amount of power needed to lift it and propel it from place to place. No wonder it had the chaos reactor in addition to the Master Emerald.

As he stood there, watching the sun set and breathing the wind, a new voice in his headset said suddenly, "Hello? Is anybody there?"

"Glad?" Knuckles said. His heart leaped at the sound of her voice. Maybe she hadn't dumped him completely, if she was calling him again.

"Thank Fith you're still speaking to me," she said, sounding tearful. "You know how you said GUN can't be trusted? You were right."

This confession sent a warm wave of vindication through him. It was followed by cold fear. "What did they do to you?"

She sighed and seemed to get a grip on herself. "Well ... nothing much. I mean, they drew a lot of blood today. I still feel pretty bad."

Knuckles clenched his teeth. "And you let them do this?"

"I didn't know what they were doing until it was done!" she wailed. "I was too worried about Sonic."

Another layer of cold joined the fear in Knuckles's heart. "What about Sonic?"

"He was strapped down and sedated. He looked so bad-I thought he was dead at first. I don't know what they're doing to him."

Knuckles stood very still. The wind in his face seemed to stick in his throat all of a sudden. Sonic was strapped down and sedated. They'd drained Glad's blood. Was Shadow right, and would they change her blood and pour it back into her?

Ramussan said quietly, "It's a shame I can't begin charging the ARK cannon this instant."

"Then I had this awful dream about Perfect Chaos," Glad went on, choking up. "He said ... because I'd refused to marry you, he was speeding up my curse. And now my arms have these black things all over them."

"Glad," Knuckles whispered. "Oh no, Glad ..."

"And my chaos eye is back," she went on. "I can see everyone they have prisoner. Tails is drugged, too. So is Sticks. No, Sticks is up now. So is Amy. And this other hedgehog named Rigel."

Shadow's voice cut into the conversation. "Did you say Rigel?"

"Yes," Glad said. "Is that Shadow?"

"Is she a gold hedgehog?" Shadow said urgently. "With a crippled hand?"

"That's her," Glad said. "Do you know her?"

Shadow took Fith's name in vain in a long, elaborate swear.

"I'll take that as a yes," Glad said slowly.

"Shadow cares about someone else?" Knuckles said sarcastically. "It's the first sign of the apocalypse."

"Shut up," Shadow snapped. "Gladiolus, was she okay?"

"She wasn't hurt when I saw her," Glad said. "But she had these black rings around her arms and neck. She said they want to replace her hand with a robot one."

There was a moment of silence. Then Shadow snarled, "Now do you understand about GUN, Glad? Do you see what they've been doing to you, winning your trust, keeping you obedient?"

"Yes," Glad whispered. "I was wrong. I want to get out of here. But my curse ..."

"Glad," Knuckles said very gently, "do you want to marry me now?"

"I'm scared," she admitted. "I just don't know enough to know if it'll work out. And I want it to work out."

"We can make it work," Knuckles told her. If only he could hold her in his arms right now, curse or no curse. Of course she was scared, poor girl. So was he, but he also was pretty sure that they'd be happy together. "I'll be there in twelve hours. Can you hold out that long?"

"Maybe. These things on my arm are growing. When Dr. Lewis sees them, he'll probably want to cut them off."

"Don't let him touch you!" Shadow broke in. "I don't care if you have singing, dancing trees growing out of your arms, don't let him touch you!"

"Okay, I'll try," Glad said, sounding troubled. "Please hurry. I don't have much battery left on my headset."

"Shadow," Knuckles said suddenly, "what are the odds that I could fight Chaos to tone her curse down?"

"Are you crazy, echidna?" Shadow replied. "He ate you last time."

"Not like that. I mean through the Master Emerald. Power verses power."

"You'd be insane to try it," Shadow muttered. "But I've been reading that the elements do like negotiation. They treat it as a sport."

"I'll try, then," Knuckles said.

Glad said softly, "You'd do that for me?"

"Of course," Knuckles replied, wishing they didn't have an audience. "After we rescue you, it'll still take a little time for me to make sure we have a place to live. I can't have you dying on me in the meantime."

Glad made a sound like a laugh and a sob combined.

"Hang in there," he told her fervently. "I love you, Glad. Now, I'm going to see if Chaos will play ball."

"I love you, Knux," she whispered. "Don't die."

Knuckles wheeled and strode for the palace entrance, fists clenched. "I have no intention of dying."

* * *

 

When Knuckles reached the Master Emerald chamber, Shadow and Maria were waiting for him.

Maria stood beside the huge gem, her white dress and golden hair slightly ghostly. She watched Knuckles approach with a worried frown. As he climbed the stairs, she said, "I don't like this, Knuckles. Perfect Chaos is frighteningly strong."

"I don't need arguments," Knuckles retorted. "I need advice. You're a superior being now. Can people like you be reasoned with?"

Maria bit her lip. "If it were only me, yes. But Chaos is as old as Mobius. I don't know-"

"Yes," Shadow interrupted. He had a huge old book in his arms, which he paged through carefully. When Knuckles tried to look at the pages, Shadow held the book away so he couldn't see.

"You can't fight Perfect Chaos with power," Shadow said. "That's stupid. He'd drink it as fast as you poured it in. You have to use something he doesn't have."

Knuckles remembered the monster looming over him with jaws wide, preparing to devour him whole. Again he felt the impossible strength of the water as it dragged him into the depths. A ghost of the sick dread he had felt then flickered inside him. "What do I possibly have that the god of water doesn't?"

Shadow rolled his eyes. "Love, moron. None of the elementals have love, and they crave it. It's why Chaos doubled Gladiolus's curse when she rejected you. Sounds to me like he was disappointed in her, and now he's done."

"So what do I do?" Knuckles said. "Offer him a hug?"

"You have to be vulnerable," Shadow said in a low voice. "He'll have to sense your love for her, and that won't happen if you go in with guns blazing."

A fight was one thing, but being vulnerable? Knuckles's misgivings grew. He hated showing weakness, and here he was going to have to do it in front of both his rival and a monster. He drew a deep breath, thinking of Glad dying slowly with awful growths all over her.

He pointed at Shadow. "You'd better not make fun of me."

Shadow gave him a blank stare. "I never make fun."

Knuckles turned to Maria. "Are you okay with this?"

She sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "Frankly, no. But I understand why you have to do this. Shadow and I will help all we can."

Knuckles squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath. Vulnerable, right. He placed both hands on the Master Emerald and gazed into the gem, focusing his mind on the thought of the ocean, the shape of that dragon head, the way that voice boomed like crashing surf. It sent ripples of terror through him, urging him to run away and hide.

"Perfect Chaos, I'd like a word with you." His voice shook a little.

Light shifted inside the Master Emerald. An image appeared that showed Chaos's dragon head curling out of the sea. "Guardian," the monster growled. "What do you want?"

The sight of the monster froze Knuckles's thoughts. Why had he done this, again? He flailed inside his head and remembered Glad. His devotion to her steadied him. "I need to talk to you about what you did to Gladiolus."

"She is unworthy of you," Chaos replied. "She will die."

"No, she won't," Knuckles snarled. "Because you're going to lighten her curse."

Beside him, Shadow made a calming motion. "Softer," he whispered.

Knuckles closed his eyes, trying to summon that part of himself that always came out when he was around Glad. It was hard to do with Shadow to his left and Chaos in front of him, reminding him of drowning hundreds of feet underwater.

"Are you interceding for her?" Chaos said, sounding genuinely surprised. "After she refused you? I thought you'd be happy with her fate."

"No, I'm not happy," Knuckles said, keeping his voice even. "I love her, Chaos. I need her to live long enough for me to marry her next week."

The dragon laughed, a terrifying, roaring scream. "Marry her now."

"She's being held prisoner right now," Knuckles said, his temper rising. Beside him, Shadow again gestured for him to calm down. He drew a long breath. "Do you remember that laboratory you destroyed? The people who wanted to harness you while you were imprisoned? They've taken Glad."

Chaos lowered his head like an angry dog protecting its throat in preparation for a fight. "I destroyed those vermin."

"Some escaped," Knuckles said. "They're doing to Glad what was done to Shadow and Maria. I have to have time to get her back. Please slow the curse down." There. He'd spoken softly, trying to convey his feelings for Glad, and hopefully not his animal fear of the monster. Shadow nodded approvingly.

Chaos sat motionless, but the water around him rolled and splashed fretfully. "You're certain you love her? I taste in her much fear. Her love for you is not great enough to overcome it."

"Give her a chance," Knuckles pleaded. "Give me a chance. We barely know each other. It's not easy."

"You mortals have been arranging marriages for each other for centuries," Chaos snorted. "This is no different. If you care to know, her heart is gentle, but ruled by fear. There are other daughters of Solaris who might suit the Guardian better."

"No," Knuckles said with exaggerated patience, "I want Gladiolus and nobody else."

Chaos growled, the noise starting as a low rumble, then rising to a roar that hurt Knuckles's head. "She is mine, Guardian! She has been mine since she brought the curse upon herself as a child."

"And I want to redeem her from you," Knuckles said. "You probably have lots of other cursed people to torment. Let Glad go."

Chaos's growl broke into a bubbling chuckle. "Your tenacity amuses me. Very few lovers of cursed echidnas ever dared to plead with me as you are doing. Tell me. What will you give for her?"

Knuckles smacked one fist against the Master Emerald. "I already sacrificed myself to you! What more do you want?"

"You fear me greatly, even now," Chaos purred. "I want to see what lengths you will go to for your love. I will allow you seven days to attempt to rescue Gladiolus and wed her. If you fail to accomplish those two things, I will claim her life."

At least it was more time. Knuckles nodded. "Fine. That'll work. Thanks."

Chaos slipped back into the sea.

Knux slid his hands off the Master Emerald and sighed, rubbing his forehead, where a faint ache was developing. The image of Chaos faded from the gem.

"Did he agree?" Maria said.

Knuckles nodded, exhaustion settling over him. He'd succeeded, mostly. But he felt as if Chaos had drawn energy from him, somehow, leaving him weakened. "He's letting her live another week."

"I told you," Shadow said. "They respect love."

"Thanks," Knuckles said, worn. "I think I'm gonna crash now." He jogged down the pyramid steps, his mind and body as tired as if he had spent the day at the gym, pumping lead.

As he went to his bunk, Ramussan said, "That was a brave thing you just did, Guardian."

"I bought her a week," Knuckles said, falling into his bunk. "I hope it's enough."

"You negotiated with a monster and got what you wanted. Few have the courage to do that." Ramussan sounded awed.

Knuckles flung one arm over his eyes. "Yeah, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. Wake me up at five. I have a ton of work tomorrow."

"Of course, sir," Ramussan said.

* * *

 

Gladiolus stood in front of the restroom mirror in the hospital room, looking at her chaos eye.

The pupil had turned sky blue, like a cataract. Inflamed veins stretched through the iris and into the white of her eye, jagged as lightning. In just a few hours it had gone back to being as bad as it had ever been. So much for the laser surgery.

She turned her head and examined her neck. The black squares had spread up her arms to her shoulders and neck. Soon they'd be on her face. The biggest ones on her arms had broken the skin, emerging as black crystals with blunted points.

_I'm turning into a chaos crystal._

Would she eventually be completely crystallized, frozen as an echidna-shaped block of stone? Would the crystals pierce her heart and lungs? Or would they puncture her throat, first? Either way, death would be slow and horrible.

Knuckles had said he would fight Chaos for her. But Chaos had been so angry. If he refused to negotiate, then Glad was doomed.

She gazed at her reflection. All her life she had been dependent on someone else. She was technically an adult, and still she expected to be taken care of, looked after, by people who had her best interests at heart. How could she be so stupidly innocent? Kindness could hide duplicity. Dr. Lewis had fed her half-truths to keep her pacified. And she had been passive, content to believe the best about GUN because they had stopped her headache.

Her knees still wobbled in the aftermath of losing so much blood. She supported herself against the sink. That had been a mistake, trusting Dr. Lewis. She'd heard about the things GUN did to her father, but it seemed so unbelievable, so distantly cruel.

She'd made mistake after mistake. Every choice played through her mind-following Shadow into the woods and talking to the Speaker, taking Lewis Gunther's card in the jungle. Cowering when the black robot brandished his fist. And her relationship with Knuckles. Had that been a mistake, too? Was marrying him the biggest mistake of all?

That was the trouble. She had no idea. If her mother and aunt didn't hate him so much, she would have asked them for advice. But they couldn't see past the crescent on his chest.

She closed her eyes. "Fith, grant me wisdom. I don't know what to do anymore." She was hemmed in on all sides by her own poor decisions. Now her body was turning to crystal and most of her friends were at GUN's mercy. Knuckles wouldn't arrive for another twelve hours.

That was one thing she knew was right. She looked at herself again. Rescuing her friends was undeniably the right thing to do. She glanced through the walls with her chaos eye, checking on them. Everyone was sitting or standing now, except Sonic, and even he was rolling his head back and forth.

_I know what to do._

As this shining thought passed through her mind, a rush of strength poured into her limbs. At the same time, the heaviness left her eye. Glad stood up straighter, lifting her chin, shaking back her dreadlocks. At that exact moment, Knuckles was wilting with weariness, his strength siphoned away by Chaos and transferred to Glad.

She smiled at her reflection. _I can save my friends by being exactly who GUN thinks I am._

She walked back into her room, not noticing that the blood loss weakness was completely gone. She pressed the nurse call button. "Someone, come quick! I've got this horrible stuff growing out of my skin!"

Dr. Lewis Gunther and Dr. Gerald Robotnik arrived in a panting rush.

"What's this you say?" Dr. Lewis said. He caught sight of the crystals protruding from Glad's fur, and froze, his mouth falling open. "Good heavens!"

Dr. Gerald leaned over Glad, examining her arms without touching them. "When did this begin?"

"They drew my blood this morning," Glad said. She didn't have to fake the trembling in her lower lip. "I was so tired afterward that I went to sleep. I just woke up, and I looked like this."

Gerald and Lewis exchanged glances. "A strange side-effect of the chaos infection," Gerald said.

"How bad is the pain?" Dr. Lewis said.

Glad flexed one arm. "It itches like crazy. It doesn't hurt, exactly."

"It's not growing from the bone, then," Dr. Lewis muttered to Dr. Gerald. "Possibly it began in the skin. Gladiolus, would you permit us to study this phenomenon?"

Shadow's words echoed through her memory: _"Don't let them touch you!"_

She nodded hesitantly. "As long as it's only x-rays and things. Pulling one out will make it worse."

"That's all we plan to do at the present," Dr. Lewis said eagerly. "Come along."

They took her down a different hall to a room with an x-ray machine. Glad went with them, docile and obedient, but she watched her surroundings. Her chaos eye showed her where they had stashed her chaos crystal-in a room off to the right somewhere. Her friends sat or stood in various depressed postures.

"Hold on, everyone," she thought. "I'll get you out of there soon."

As she stood in place for the x-ray, she gazed in the direction of Eggman's base. There was chaos power over there, too, but it was hazy and out of focus. She gazed at the brightest of the hazy spots, trying to decide what she was seeing. A machine of some kind, maybe?

Next they took her to another room with a chaoscope to get a reading on her aura. As Glad stood for this, she carefully gazed around the hospital. She would have missed the chaos emerald otherwise-it was sealed in some kind of container that dimmed its glow to the faintest of shimmers. Sonic would need that to use chaos control and escape. It looked like it was in a room where he was being held.

"Gladiolus," said Dr. Lewis, running a hand through his bushy white hair, "I'm afraid your chaos infection has metastasized."

"What's that mean?" Glad said, gazing at the chaoscope's camera.

"It means that the infection has spread from your eye to other parts of your body. I'm sorry."

"I thought the laser healed it?" Glad said. More lies they had told her. How had she been so dumb as to believe it all?

Dr. Lewis looked sideways at Dr. Gerald. "We were mistaken. It appears that your infection had spread all along, and we only neutralized one small part of it."

Glad drew a deep breath to steady herself. "How much longer do I have?"

"Weeks. Certainly less than a month."

The words hit her like ice in the face-cold and sharp. Chaos had accelerated the curse. Had Knuckles been able to negotiate, after all?

Although she had planned to ask the next question, she didn't have to fake her lost expression, or the tears in her voice. "Could ... could I see my friends again? The ones here? Before I die?"

Dr. Lewis's eyes flashed. "Of course not. They are far too dangerous to allow-"

"Lewis," Dr. Gerald interrupted, "the girl's last wish is to see her friends. Give her what she wants." He wore an odd expression behind his tiny glasses, as if he had once watched another girl die slowly.

The two men stepped outside and had a whispered argument in the hall. Glad waited, twisting her fingers in her dreadlocks. This was the sneakiest she had ever been in her life. Her stomach quivered. Whether it paid off or not, she was still going to die. She touched the crystals protruding from her skin, following them up her arm and shoulder to her neck. They had climbed to her jawbone now, a sprinkling of tiny splinters in her skin. How could marrying Knuckles reverse this? Would he even want to marry her when he saw her slowly turning to crystal?

The doctors returned, Gerald smiling and Lewis looking sulky.

"We'll bring your friends to your room in an hour," Gerald said. "We have to take precautions, understand. You second-generation engineered people are quite dangerous. None of you will be allowed to leave the room once they arrive."

Glad nodded. "Thank you. I understand."


	12. Chapter 12

Thus it was that an hour later, Amy, Sticks, Tails, and Sonic arrived one by one, all of them wearing black metal bands like Rigel's. Last of all, Rigel arrived, beaming at them all like they were attending a party.

"This is a nice mess we're in," Amy observed as they all sat on the beds. "Glad, you've got something on your arm."

Glad held out both arms. "Crystals are growing out of my skin."

"Ew, gross!" Sonic exclaimed. He leaned forward to look and toppled off the bed. Tails helped him back up. "Sorry," Sonic said. "They doped me up hard and I'm not out of it yet."

"I always knew that the evil scientists would catch us someday," Sticks said darkly. "Look at these rings they put on us! They'll track our every move. And they're sending mind-control rays into our brains."

"They're hepatizon," Glad said drearily. "They take away your chaos powers."

"That's not fair!" Tails exclaimed. "Why didn't they put any on you, Glad?"

She held up one arm, now mottled with black. "Because I'm dying. And I don't have any chaos powers."

"Does it hurt?" Amy asked in a hushed voice.

"It itches," Glad replied. "Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. We're going to escape."

Everyone sat up a little straighter.

"We already tried that once," Rigel said. "And here we are."

"Oh, sorry, this is Rigel," Glad said. She introduced her to her friends. "I got them to put us in one room so you can all tell me goodbye or something. Knuckles will be here with Angel Island in less than eight hours."

"That long?" Sonic said. "I had no idea how long I was under. It's been, what, a day?"

Glad nodded. "All we have to do is get these bands off and find the chaos emerald." She pointed at the far corner of the room. "It's over there. In a container. I can see it."

Rigel inched away from Glad a little.

Everyone else looked in the direction Glad pointed.

"How far?" Sonic asked.

Glad squinted. "About forty feet. I think it's in the room you were in."

"At least we know where it is," Amy said. "But we're locked in here with no tools or weapons."

Tails hopped off the bed and went to the door. He examined it all the way around. "Opens inward, hinges on the other side," he announced. "Nice metal security door." He tapped the walls on either side and pressed one ear against them. "The walls are prefabricated plywood. There's steel plating here and here ... but not here." He sat up and grinned. "Sonic, one spin dash would tear through this wall like wet paper."

"Can I spin dash with these rings on?" Sonic said. He jumped off the bed and tried it. He managed a brief spin that ended with him sprawled on the floor. "Wow. That sucks. I can't get any momentum."

Tails's face fell. "Oh." He went along the walls, listening to them and tapping.

"Sonic," Amy said, "if you can't spin dash, what would the rings do if you tried to chaos control?"

Sonic touched the ring around his neck. "Do you think it would cut my head off?"

Amy shuddered. "I don't want to find out."

Rigel spoke up. "We need to figure out how to take off the rings."

"They locked them electronically," Tails said. "Didn't you guys see that wand they used, with the light?"

"I was kind of not awake," Sonic replied.

Sticks, Amy and Rigel compared their rings. Glad looked, too. Each ring was smooth and polished, with a tight seam where they fastened together. There was a small hinge at the other side.

"They're handcuffs," Sticks observed. "Only not chained together."

"Tails," Amy said, "could you take these apart?"

"If I had my tools," the fox replied. He was investigating the bathroom walls by this time.

Sonic sighed. "I wish I had my headset. They took it and I don't know where it is now."

Glad pulled hers out of her jacket pocket. "I have mine, but the battery is almost dead."

"Sweet." Sonic put it on. "You think Knux got the repeater working?"

"He did," Glad said.

Sonic raised an eyebrow. "Oh. That's why the battery is almost dry, eh? Long, romantic conversations?"

"Leave her alone, Sonic," Amy said.

He shrugged and turned on the headset. "Sonic to Angel Island. Anybody there? Oh, hey Knux. Yeah, we're locked in this room with chaos-dampening rings on us. We need a rescue. And some tools."

"My big metal cutters," Tails said.

"Yeah, those," Sonic said. "We're in that northern wing Eggman built last year. Not sure exactly where. Yeah, there's robot guards and stuff. Thanks, man."

Sonic turned the headset off and handed it back to Gladiolus, making a face. "He's sending Shadow."

"Shadow?" Rigel exclaimed.

"Black hedgehog with a bad attitude? Yeah, him," Sonic said. "If he can find us."

Glad scanned the hospital wing for Shadow's blue and red aura. After a few minutes it appeared in the distance and immediately began flickering from place to place.

"He's here," Glad said. "He's looking for us."

They all waited, tense, watching the door. Would alarms go off? Would there be a fight?

All that happened was that Shadow appeared in the middle of the room, his spines slightly rumpled. "There you are." He lifted a pair of huge metal shears down from one shoulder and handed them to Tails. "Figures that you idiots would get yourselves into trouble."

He turned and saw Rigel.

The hedgehogs stared at each other for a long, electrifying second. Everyone else glanced between them, sensing the tension. Glad saw both their auras flare up like fire with gasoline added.

"Hello, Shadow," Rigel said.

"Hello, Rigel," Shadow said. His voice was low, concerned. "How's your hand?"

The gold hedgehog wiggled her thumb and forefinger. "Not too bad. It's better than being dead." She frowned at him. "It's been five years."

"I know." Shadow looked away.

"You said you'd come back. Where have you been?"

Shadow opened his mouth, but was interrupted by a loud snap. Tails had just used the shears to cut a band off Sonic's left wrist.

"Sorry to interrupt this touching reunion," Sonic said, "but we'd like to get out of here sometime today."

Shadow folded his arms. "Then hurry up. I'll get you out and we can forget this ever happened."

Footsteps sounded outside the door. All of them spun toward it with a gasp. Keys jingled in the lock.

Sonic shot across the room and braced himself against the door, holding it shut. "Hurry!" he stage-whispered.

Shadow growled and grabbed the shears. "Why do I have to do everything for you?" He efficiently cut rings off wrists, ankles and necks, wielding the shears like a pair of swords. He removed Sonic's, too, without Sonic budging from the door.

The door lurched as someone hit it from the other side. A male voice cursed. Sonic braced his shoes on the concrete and leaned his full weight against it. Amy and Tails ran to help him.

"Fine, whatever," Shadow said, grabbing Sticks's arm. He disappeared in a flicker of light. A moment later he reappeared, grabbed Rigel, and took her away, too.

"You next, Amy," Sonic said, as the person hit the door again. There were more voices snarling outside.

Glad ran to take Amy's place. "Let me go last. If I get caught, they won't do anything to me."

"No," Sonic said, "but Knuckles might object. Strongly."

"You're sick from the drugs," Glad said severely. "Go home."

"Stop being heroic, Glad," Sonic said with a grin, as Shadow grabbed Tails and disappeared again. "You're supposed to be the shivering little mouse, not this awesome take-charge person. Knux won't recognize you."

"Dying has that effect on me," Glad retorted. "What can they do to me, honestly, that's worse than having my heart slowly impaled on growing crystals?"

Sonic glanced at her arms, now studded with black shards. "What'd you do to make Chaos so mad?"

Glad looked down. "I kind of ... broke up with Knuckles for a few hours."

Sonic laughed, then braced himself as the people outside nearly forced the door open. He and Glad slammed it shut.

"Glad," he said, "if Chaos ships you, then you don't have much say in the matter, do you?"

Glad made a face. "It sounds awful when you say it like that."

Shadow reappeared and grabbed Sonic's arm. "Don't get caught," he told Glad. Then he and Sonic vanished.

Glad was suddenly, awfully alone in the hospital room. She took Sonic's place against the door. But she wasn't heavy enough or strong enough to hold the door shut when the next blow came.

The force of the impact sent her flying across the room, where she collided with a bed. Instead of the humans she had expected, the burly black robot stepped into the room, orange eyes burning like embers. It was Metal Sonic-yet not.

The robot glanced around the room, then said over his shoulder, "They're gone."

"Gone?" shrieked Dr. Lewis in the hallway behind. He shoved his way around Hazard and stared around wildly. He barely looked at Glad, who stood against the wall and tried to blend in. "But how? There's no exits from this room!"

Shadow reappeared. Unfortunately, he returned at the same spot he had left, which was almost within Hazard's arms. The robot seized him and whipped one arm around Shadow's neck in a chokehold. "You move, I throttle you," the robot told him.

Shadow panted, eyes wild. "Chaos control. Chaos control! Why isn't it working?"

Dr. Lewis watched this encounter with a smile of delight replacing his earlier rage. "Shadow the hedgehog!"

Shadow froze, staring at the scientist. He looked like a wounded deer facing off against a pack of wolves-helpless, hopeless, terrified.

"I don't need the others, now," Dr. Lewis said. "Their results are interesting, but you ... you're still alive!"

Shadow tried to twist out of Hazard's grip. The robot tightened his hold, and Shadow stilled, gasping.

Glad couldn't bear it. Shadow had always been so self-assured, so proud and haughty. Seeing him cornered, trapped, and gloated over humiliated her on his behalf. She hurried to Hazard and placed a hand on the cold, hepatizon-plated arm. "Please don't choke him."

Hazard's orange eyes flicked to her face. "He'll escape if I don't."

"Just let him breathe," Glad said.

The robot released his hold a tiny bit. Shadow gasped, his breath rasping in his throat. He gave Gladiolus a grateful look.

"Take him to the containment room," Dr. Lewis said. "Gladiolus, you come, too. I'm so looking forward to your autopsy." He made as though to grab her arm, then changed his mind and wiped his hand on his labcoat instead.

This shocked Glad with a new awareness. Nobody wanted to touch her horrifying crystal-studded arms. She was well-nigh invincible.

Hazard hauled Shadow out, his grip deadening Shadow's chaos powers. Dr. Lewis followed close by, hovering, gloating over regaining one of his chief experiments. The door stood open.

Glad hesitated. Nobody was forcing her to go. She could sit right here and await rescue.

...or she could take the initiative and try to save Shadow and herself.

She slipped out of the room and followed her captors, head down, submissive, the perfect prisoner. When they passed the room Sonic had been in, she turned the knob and ducked in. The table that had held the hedgehog was still there, the straps loose and in disarray. There was a countertop with a sink and several cabinets. Sitting on this counter was a black box. Glad's chaos eye saw the emerald glowing inside. She opened the box and gazed at the beautiful green gem inside. It burned like a star, reminding her strongly of the Master Emerald and Knuckles.

A little more chaos power couldn't possibly kill her any faster. She picked up the emerald, shoved it in her jacket pocket with the headset, and hurried after Hazard, Dr. Lewis, and Shadow.

* * *

Knuckles paced back and forth in the underground palace's main hall. His other friends sat or stood around him, groaning, stretching, exclaiming at how good it was to be home.

Shadow was supposed to have brought back Glad. He hadn't come back.

"What's taking so long?" Knuckles snarled. Panic was eating him up inside, and it manifested as ferocity.

"Any minute," Sonic said. "Unless somebody busted the door down and Shads got caught."

"He has chaos control," Amy pointed out. "No restraint can hold him."

"Except those black rings," Sonic said. "And that black robot. You don't think they called that thing, do you?"

Every word they said made Knuckles more anxious. He dug his fingers into his dreadlocks. "They aren't back, guys. Do you think-was Glad really weak? Do you think she maybe ... maybe wouldn't survive a chaos control?"

"She was great," Sonic said. "Holding the door shut. Coming up with escape plans. I think dying is good for her. She's fearless."

"Did she look bad?"

"Oh yeah," Sonic said with gruesome enjoyment. "She's got these huge nasty crystals sticking out of her. It's awful."

Awful. Knuckles resumed pacing. Crystals growing out of her! What kind of craziness did this curse do? Hadn't Chaos slowed it down, like he promised? What if she was so horribly disfigured, he couldn't stand to look at her? He mentally smacked himself. It didn't matter. She was still the same person inside, no matter how badly the curse changed the outside. He had promised to marry her, and he'd do it. But the craven, cowardly part of him hoped she wasn't a horrible-looking monster by the time he got to her.

The minutes ticked by and became an hour, then two. Amy pulled together a massive lunch that doubled as dinner. Everyone stuffed themselves, but Knuckles refused to leave his vigil in the main hall.

Amy took him a plate. "You need to eat."

"I know." The big echidna took the plate and gazed at the massive burger and flame-roasted potatoes it contained. His stomach woke up and demanded every last crumb.

"She'll be okay," Amy told him. "You know how she is. She's so good, the scientists didn't even put rings on her. She doesn't resist or anything, but she had them doing exactly what she wanted."

Knuckles smiled a little. The thought of shy, timid Gladiolus manipulating the manipulators pleased him. He bit into the burger and tried not to feel guilty for enjoying it.

Amy clasped and unclasped her hands. "You saw the yellow hedgehog who came back with us, right? Rigel?"

Knuckles nodded. "Another experiment?"

"She and Shadow have some kind of chemistry," Amy said in an undertone. "I haven't had time to ask her about it. Has he ever mentioned her to you?"

"Shadow doesn't tell me anything," Knuckles said. "We plotted to save you guys and that was it. Did you know he joined the crew?"

Amy's eyes widened. "He did? What's his title?"

"Wizard. Apparently his knowledge of chaos powers just got a lot bigger."

Amy smiled. "Wait until I tell Sonic. He has to work with Shadow now."

"Yeah." Knuckles glanced around the empty hall, at the doorways and staircases. "I wish they'd come back."

"Only a few hours left," Amy soothed. "We're almost there."

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah. Thanks for the chat and dinner. This place is really empty without you guys."

"Believe me," Amy said, "I couldn't wait to get back."

As she turned to return to the kitchen, Knuckles said, "One more thing. Did you guys bring back the chaos emerald?"

Amy winced. "No. Shadow rescued us straight from our prison room. There was no time to hunt around."

Knuckles nodded, his heart sinking. "Okay. Just checking."

Amy left him with his dinner and gloomy thoughts. Without the chaos emerald, there'd be no quick, easy travel on and off Angel Island. There had to be another way to get there.

Still eating, he carried his plate to the control room. The wall of monitors showed the island's progress toward its destination. Still six hours to go.

One screen changed to show a text message from Ramussan: Guardian, put on your headset.

Knuckles hastily scooped a fresh one out of its box in the corner and put it on. "What's up, Ram?"

"We are being hailed by Dr. Eggman," Ramussan said. "Do you wish to communicate with him? I can patch sound through to your headset."

What did Eggman want? Hopefully, he wasn't happy with Angel Island coming after him. Knuckles laughed darkly to himself. "Put him on."

The center screen changed to a live video of Eggman, who looked disgruntled. "Oh crap, not you. I was trying to reach Sonic."

"Whatever you have to say concerns me, too, Eggman," Knuckles said.

"Fine," Eggman snapped. "Turn your floating rock around or I'll blast craters in it."

"Actually," Knuckles said, smiling through clenched teeth, "we're planning to blow holes in your fortress with our super weapon."

Eggman adjusted his glasses. "And why, pray tell, would you go to all that effort?"

"You're sheltering GUN scientists," Knuckles said. "They kidnapped an echidna named Gladiolus. I want her back."

"Oh ho," Eggman said with a grin. "Your friends flew the coop and forgot to take her along? Poor Knuckles, reduced to violence, as usual."

"It's your choice, Eggman," Knuckles said through his teeth. "Return her safe, or witness the ARK cannon at close range."

"You don't scare me," Eggman snarled. "All I have to do is blow the top off that mountain of yours to ruin your precious cannon. I have missile payloads big enough to do it, too."

Knuckles clenched his fists. He wanted to hit Eggman in the face so badly-he had to restrain himself from destroying the monitor. "I hope Shadow wrecks your base from the inside."

"Shadow's not here, is he?" Eggman looked left and right. "No. Don't say it. You haven't heard the last of me, echidna." The connection cut off, the screen going dark.

Knuckles stood there, quivering with equal parts rage and fright. Blow the top off the mountain! And the ARK cannon couldn't even fire, anyway!

"He's calling our bluff, Ramussan," he said, trying not to let his teeth chatter.

The AI was seething. "So I heard. I wish the ARK cannon was ready to fire at this instant."

"Do we have any defenses? Shields or something?"

"At one point, we had shields," Ramussan replied. "But Chaos peeled the shield generators off the island during the Calamity. Perhaps you could find a way to shoot down missiles yourselves?"

"Tails's biplane," Knuckles murmured. "I've seen him shoot rockets right out of the air. Let me ask him." He raced out of the control room, telling himself that he wasn't panicked, he was behaving completely rationally. And encouraging a friend to attempt to shoot down a missile in a small plane. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.


	13. Chapter 13

Shadow and Gladiolus faced each other in opposite chairs. They sat in an exam room that had metal paneling on the walls. Tiny beads of black hepatizon blanketed these panels. If someone tried to chaos control out of the room, the beads would shred their immaterial substance like shrapnel.

"I'm sorry," Glad said.

The black hedgehog looked up from picking at the black ring around his wrist. "For what? I'm the one who failed."

They had taken the gold rings that Shadow used to wear around his wrists and ankles. Shadow had fought and cursed until the black robot had slammed his head against the wall. He had gone quiet after that, allowing them to slip the rings onto his limbs and neck.

He was still quiet as he sat there, fiddling with a ring like a dog worrying a bone.

"I'm no good at this courageous hero stuff," Glad said humbly. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest and her crystal-studded arms wrapped around them. The crystals were still growing and she couldn't bear to look at them. "I should have made Hazard let you go. We could both be home right now."

"You couldn't make that robot do anything," Shadow scoffed. "Once it touched me, my chaos power went dead. Poof. It's still dead. I can't feel it at all with these stupid rings on."

Glad glanced at the counter nearby. It had the customary sink in it, and the drain was making a gurgling sound. They must be running water elsewhere. After a while it stopped.

Shadow dug his fingers into his black spines. "I hate this. How do you stand feeling so powerless all the time?"

"What, you mean normal?" Glad said. "I've never had chaos powers. Not like some of those crazy experiments."

"You can glide with your hair as a sail," Shadow pointed out. "That's a power."

"That's structural weirdness," Glad said, nudging her dreadlocks with her elbows. "It's not teleporting or-or throwing fireballs or something."

Shadow half-smiled. "Fireballs weren't a power."

"None of it makes sense to me," Glad said. "They made my father. He could glide. But they don't put rings on me-they put them on Rigel, who has no powers at all."

"Poor Rigel," Shadow said, shaking his head. "Her body heals a thousand times faster than normal. That's her power. It's why her hand is crippled-it healed so fast that it healed wrong."

Glad shook her head. "I had no idea that could happen." The chaos emerald in her jacket pocket was a comforting weight. Pulling it out now would do good, though. Shadow couldn't use it and neither could she.

"What will they do to you?" Glad asked.

For the first time, Shadow's ears flattened. He rubbed his shoulders and scanned the walls. "They know that I'm only half of the organism. They'll use me to get to Maria. It'll kill her to leave the Master Emerald, but they don't care. They'll want to study her in her new state, replicate it in other people until they have an army."

The idea of an army of ghostly, chaos-powered people like Maria made Glad want to run and hide. She hugged her knees a little tighter.

Keys jingled in the door's lock. Glad and Shadow stiffened. Glad willed herself to turn invisible.

The door opened and Dr. Gerald stepped in. He studied Shadow with an intense expression that made him look more like Eggman than ever. He closed the door and stood gazing at Shadow, ignoring Glad.

"Hello, Shadow," Gerald said.

Shadow said nothing, but yellow-green blazed all through his aura. Glad blinked her chaos eye. Shadow was terrified, in pain, or both.

"No greeting for your old man?" Gerald said. "After all these years? I'd given you and Maria up for dead."

"I hoped you were dead," Shadow snarled, sitting up straight. "I thought you were one of the people who used a wisp."

Gerald shook his head. "I knew the wisps were too unstable for humans. But you're alive! Have you awakened Maria?"

Shadow turned his head and stared at the wall.

"Shadow, please." Gerald's voice dropped, softening, pleading. "She's my grand-daughter. I sacrificed everything for her. Please tell me she's alive."

Shadow refused to answer. The silence stretched on and on until Gladiolus couldn't bear it. "You're Maria's grandfather?"

Gerald turned to her with a suddenness that made her flinch. "Yes. I was attempting to cure her illness. She lives?"

Glad nodded, afraid to say too much. Shadow gazed at her, his red eyes proclaiming that if she told Gerald anything, Shadow would kill her with his bare hands.

"I knew it!" Gerald exclaimed, beaming. "She must live, or you would have died, Shadow. How is she? Did the prolonged chaos energy exposure improve her condition?"

Shadow said nothing and Glad dared not answer for him. She thought of Maria, ghostly, powerful, kind. And Shadow had said she was in love with Knuckles.

That knowledge irritated her, like a splinter in her heart. She caught Shadow's eye. "You lied to me."

Startled, the black hedgehog blinked. "What?"

"You said Knuckles was in love with her."

"What's this?" Gerald exclaimed.

Glad ignored him. "I asked him and he explained. You lied."

Shadow bared his teeth. "I told you the truth, as I see it."

"Then you believe a lie!" Glad exclaimed. "Why would you tell me something like that?"

Shadow looked away. For the first time, he looked ashamed of himself. "I wanted to use you to hurt him. In revenge for what he did."

For rescuing Maria, he meant. Glad and Shadow both shot Gerald a glance, willing him to go away. But Gerald was listening intently, studying them both.

"Maria must be well," he said in a low voice, "if she's involved in a love triangle."

"It's not a love triangle!" Glad exclaimed. "Knuckles told me that he has to protect-"

Shadow kicked her ankle. She stopped talking, aghast at the magnitude of what she had revealed.

Gerald grinned. "Oh really! This echidna my grandson despises so much? Maybe he would be willing to tell me more." He patted Shadow on the head. "Don't worry, son. We'll have many more conversations like this." He turned and left, locking the door behind him.

"You had to open your mouth," Shadow muttered.

"Sue me!" Gladiolus hissed. "I didn't think he'd understand. Are you done taking revenge on Knuckles now?"

"Yes," Shadow snapped. "I was trying to break you two up, okay? But that didn't work. He's crazy about you. I may not like him, but we're colleagues now, and I'm working through things. Just don't tell Gerald about Maria. He already knows too much."

Glad sat back in her chair, slightly mollified. Knuckles was crazy about her? She hugged the knowledge to herself. Of course, she was pretty sure he was, but hearing it from Shadow made it real, somehow.

The drain gurgled again, loudly. A wet smell filled the room.

"That drain is backing up," Shadow said.

Glad stood and looked. Dirty water was flowing into the sink, carrying stinking black scum. "Rushed plumbing job, looks like. I hope it doesn't overflow."

Before her eyes, the dirty water gathered itself together and formed into a blobby creature. It had an onion-shaped head, a round body, and droplet-shaped paws and feet. It reminded her of a wisp. The dirty water color faded into a solid sky blue. The wisp-like creature opened a pair of sea-green eyes and looked at her.

Glad stared back, frozen. "Chaos?" she whispered.

Shadow rose to his feet, saw the creature, and threw out an arm to hold Glad back. "It's a chao."

"It formed itself out of water!"

"I've only heard of them. Don't touch it."

The chao climbed out of the sink and stood on the counter, gazing at them. "Who are you?" it said in a sweet baby voice.

"It's adorable," Glad said, torn between adoration and terror. It had to be connected with Chaos somehow. She cleared her throat. "I'm Gladiolus Lark." When Shadow said nothing, she added, "And this is Shadow the Hedgehog."

The chao studied both of them seriously, one round paw tapping against its tiny mouth. "Hello, Gladiolus Lark and Shadow. Will you play with me?"

Shadow retreated to his chair and tucked his feet under him. "Keep that thing away from me." His pupils were so dilated that the red irises were almost hidden.

Glad extended a hand. "Do you mind if I touch you?"

"That sounds nice," said the chao.

She ran her fingers across the onion-shaped head. It gave a little, like a plushy made of jello. It wasn't wet, like she had expected. It was warm and soft, and her chaos eye saw only a faint blue glow. But she couldn't shake the feeling that this was Chaos in a different form. Maybe it was a test to see how they would treat it.

She gently lifted the chao off the counter and set it on the floor. It giggled and began to toddle around the room, ducking under the chairs and peeking into the corners. Shadow curled a little tighter, shrinking away from the chao whenever it came close.

The chao toddled to the wall with the black beads. It raised a paw and touched one. At once it recoiled, as if it had been stung, making a pathetic cry.

Glad scooped it up and rubbed its paw. "Don't touch those, poor thing! That's hepatizon. It's bad for you and bad for us, too."

The chao looked up at her with wide, innocent eyes. At first she thought that it had no pupils. But from a few inches away, she realized that it had very small, cat-eye pupils. Like Chaos's. Her breath stuttered in her lungs and she had to work very hard not to fling the chao away.

"Hepatizon," the chao repeated in its baby voice. Glad thought she heard the echo of Chaos's booming voice in her head. Shadow flinched, as if he had heard it, too. They exchanged a horrified look.

Footsteps rang on the floor outside. The door unlocked and swung open. Lewis, Gerald, and Eggman stepped in, all glaring at each other as if in the middle of an argument.

"See, here they are," Dr. Lewis growled, his glasses magnifying his glare. "Safe and sound, no escape attempts."

Eggman pointed at Shadow. "I don't want him in my base! You haul him out right away."

"The other facility needs extensive renovation," Gerald growled. "He's incapacitated. He'll do no harm to your precious base."

Glad turned a little to shield the chao from their view. It scrambled upright in her arms, warm, wiggly, and difficult to hold. Its green eyes were fixed on the three men with intense interest. So far none of them had spared a glance for Glad. She might have been already dead for all they cared.

"I'm about to begin surface to air combat with Angel Island," Eggman snarled. "The rodents want their friends back. My base is no good to you if they level it."

"You assured us that your defenses were adequate," Dr. Lewis exclaimed. "You know what they did to NME's flagship!"

Eggman folded his arms. "If they get off a single shot, it would wreak enough destruction to compromise my entire base. Do you want to take that risk? Send back these two and we'll start over."

"Start over!" Gerald cried. "This is Project Shadow! The others are secondary to his importance! We successfully created a god!"

"And this god damns you," Shadow muttered.

"Then at least send her back," Eggman said, pointing at Gladiolus. "She's the reason they're declaring war on me."

All three men looked at Glad, with her crystal-studded arms wrapped around a chao. For a second there was utter silence.

"What is that?" Gerald breathed.

"More to the point," Eggman said, "where did she get it?"

"It came up the drain," Glad said. "As water."

The three scientists looked dubiously at the sink. "This happens often?" Lewis said.

Eggman sucked in a breath. "This had better not be what I think it is." He wrenched the door open and bolted down the hall.

Gerald inched toward the door, too. But Lewis stooped and peered closely at the chao. "It seems quite solid. You said it was water? This color?"

"No," Glad said. "Just dirty drain water. Then it gathered itself up and became this."

"Fascinating," Dr. Lewis said. "May I hold it?"

The chao made no sound as Lewis lifted it out of Glad's arms. Its green eyes never left Lewis's face.

Glad crept out of her chair and stood beside Shadow. One hand slipped into her pocket and found the chaos emerald's cool, heavy shape. She had no idea what she'd do with it, but holding it comforted her.

Shadow rose from his chair and stood there, spines bristling. A barely perceptible tremor ran through him. Something awful was about to happen, and all they could do was stand there and watch.

"Don't hurt it," Glad said.

"I have no intention of hurting it," Dr. Lewis said. He carried the chao out and locked the door behind him.

"We are going to die," Shadow said. "We're going to die while locked in this room."

"Don't give up." Glad pulled out the chaos emerald and displayed it. "I have this, at least."

Shadow stared at the gem the way a starving man regards food. "Gladiolus ... we might be able to get out of here."

"But how?" she said. "You said that using chaos control would be fatal with the hepatizon on the walls."

Shadow grinned-a real, happy grin, not his usual bitter smirk. "I'm a chaos wizard now. There's more than one thing we can do with a chaos emerald."

* * *

"Sure, I can fix the ARK cannon," Tails said, looking cheerful. "It blew all the breakers when we fired it, but that was only because we fired at full power. If we fire it at half or a quarter, it'd be just fine. Remember, we have to land the island first. Seawater coolant."

"I remember," Knuckles said grimly. "What about missiles? Could you shoot down incoming missiles in your plane?"

Tails thought about this. He and Knuckles stood in the control room, where Tails had just finished watching a recording of Eggman's threats.

"I'd rather do it with the ARK cannon, honestly," Tails said. "I can set up a firing trajectory and Ram can handle the calculations. In a plane, I'm essentially a second missile with my own trajectory. If we don't intersect early enough, the missile gets through."

Knuckles sort of understood this. "Right. How long will it take to fix the breakers?"

"Maybe an hour," Tails said. "I reset most of them already so the lights would work. There's still a few fuses that need replacing on the third floor."

"Do that," Knuckles said. "We may not have long before Eggman starts firing at us."

Tails trotted out, chipper at the excuse to fix something. Knuckles looked at the video feed of Eggman's island on the monitors. It was growing closer all the time: a black volcano with a white building on top of the crater, itself designed to look like a puff of steam. The geothermal heat provided power for Eggman, and he sold the excess to Bygone Island. Blowing holes in the base would ruin the lives of everyone on the island for months.

The new wing extended out from the northern side of the base in an ugly white rectangle. It made an easy target. The trouble was, he had no idea where Glad was. He might incinerate her as the energy beam passed through. The idea made him sick.

He shared these observations with Ramussan, who listened carefully.

"Those are valid concerns, Guardian," the AI replied. "My scans show that most of the geothermal power structure is underground. Here." A green box indicated a spot below Eggman's base, deep in the volcano's cone. "The base itself is honeycombed with rooms and machinery. This is my recommended course of action. First shot placed here." A red circle appeared around the topmost tower. "This is the communication relay. He will be unhappy to lose that. If that does not secure his surrender, then the second shot should be placed here." Another red circle appeared along the top of a larger tower. "This will remove his roof and cause structural damage without destroying the entire base. It may catch fire."

"So you want to nibble away Eggman's base from the top down," Knuckles said.

"Yes," Ramussan said. "It was standard procedure when a Guardian desired surrender and not complete destruction. The enemy has many, many opportunities to rethink."

"Do it," Knuckles said, clenching his fists against the console. "It'll give me a chance to find Glad and get her out of there."

"You will be inside as I fire?" Ramussan exclaimed. "No. I cannot endanger you like that."

Knuckles rolled his eyes. "You're so overprotective, Ram. I'll be in this section to the north. Don't shoot at it."

Ramussan carefully flagged the north wing in yellow. "I shall endeavor to protect that wing from damage and falling debris."

"Thanks." Knuckles bit his lip. "I'm going now. Tell the others where I went. Hopefully I can be back before the shooting starts, and both sides will stand down."

"Yes, Guardian," Ramussan said. "Go risk your life for the good of others. I take no responsibility for what the Warrior will do to you upon your return."

"Sonic will be too busy to worry about me," Knuckles said, and walked out.

A plan had been developing in his head since his friends had come back without the chaos emerald. The Master Emerald surely had enough power to work a teleport. Maria used it, didn't she? And he was part of her weird power network thing. Mostly, his plan was to ask her very nicely to teleport him.

He hesitated on the threshold of the Master Emerald's chamber, facing the huge doors with the gold access plates. He wouldn't turn and look into the antechamber. There were no assassins waiting to kill him. Keeping his eyes on the doors, he touched the gold plate. The door swung open. Still without looking into the antechamber, he stepped into the Master Emerald's chamber.

Maria didn't appear until he reached the top of the pyramid. She sat on top of the Master Emerald, arms crossed, lower lip thrust out in a pout. "No."

"No what?" Knuckles said, grinning.

"No using the Master Emerald to chaos control."

She'd either read his mind, or she'd had the same idea. He laid a hand on the gem. The power radiating from it and Maria were the same. "You're saying it's not powerful enough?"

Maria hunched her shoulders and shook back her golden hair. "I'm saying that it's a one-way trip. I'm not stranding you in Ramussan's cross-hairs."

"Ahh," Knuckles replied. "You two have been conspiring against me."

Maria's eyes slid sideways. "Maybe. You're not going, and that's final."

"Did he show you his firing solution?" Knuckles said, leaning toward her. "I'm going to the north wing. He's shooting at the rest of the base. He promised not to hit the area I'll be."

Maria sighed and gazed at the wall.

"Maria," Knuckles said softly. Vulnerable. "I've got to rescue Gladiolus and Shadow. I'll come back with the chaos emerald. It'll be fine. I know you'd save Shadow if you could. Won't you let me try?"

Her lip trembled. She savagely tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "Blast you, Knuckles. I can't ... I can't say no to that. I've been so worried about Shadow being back with GUN. They'll come for me, too." She held out a hand. "Come with me. I'll take you. Don't let go until we arrive."

He took her tiny hand in his huge one. The world faded to shades of green, ghostly and vague. Maria tugged at him, and they drifted through stone walls like smoke.

"This is a teleport?" Knuckles said. His voice didn't seem to make sound here.

Maria heard him, somehow. Her voice spoke in his head, "The Master Emerald has far more control than chaos."

They were out over the sea now, soaring toward Eggman's base like a pair of seabirds. There was no wind, no sensation of flight, only the sight of the world spinning by.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a strange creature joined them. It looked like a wisp, with an onion-shaped head and blobby limbs. It soared alongside Knuckles and said, "Where are you going?"

Maria screamed-a thin, distant sound. They kept flying along, and the creature kept pace with them, its green eyes fixed on them.

"What is it?" Knuckles asked, more disturbed by Maria's reaction than by the creature itself.

"It's a projection of Chaos," she whispered in his head. "It's called a chao. Be very careful what you say to it."

Knuckles turned to the chao. "I'm going to that island."

The chao turned its green eyes thoughtfully in the volcano island's direction. "Can I come, too?"

Maria frantically shook her head.

"You'd better not," Knuckles told the chao. "It's going to be very dangerous. You might get hurt." It felt weird to be warning a giant dragon about getting hurt, but this little creature looked so weak. Why would Chaos project something so helpless?

The chao bared a set of jagged, shark-like teeth. "If someone hurts me, I'll hurt them back."

"I'll bet," Knuckles muttered. He checked Maria, who watched this exchange with a horrified expression.

"Be very careful," she whispered. "I think Chaos is still gathering information with them. Don't hurt it, whatever you do."

"Don't hurt the cute chubby thing," Knuckles said. "Got it."

They passed through the walls of the north wing, several rooms, and to a short, empty hallway with a single door in the middle.

"This is where Shadow and Gladiolus are imprisoned," Maria said. "I'll leave you here. Good luck."

She disappeared. The world blinked back to normal colors.

Knuckles dropped onto his feet and staggered. The chao landed beside him, giggling.

"Shh," he told it. The door was a thick metal one with a keyhole and no knob. The base was quiet, but voices spoke somewhere in the distance-angry, arguing voices. If he broke the door down, they'd hear.

He pressed one ear against the door.

"No, that won't work," Gladiolus's voice was saying. "I can't find it when I focus. The emerald won't let me."

Shadow cursed in a weary way. "I don't know why it's not cooperating. Can you find anything?"

"Only a kind of fiery thing. I can try to draw that out ... Ouch!"

The chao mimicked Knuckles and pressed the side of its head against the door.

Knuckles knocked softly.

Silence from inside the room.

"Glad?" he said into the crack beside the lock. "Shadow? It's Knuckles."

Glad's voice spoke from the other side of the crack. "Knuckles?" She sounded delighted, and frightened, too. "Oh Fith, don't let them catch you."

"I can break the door down," he said, "but it'll make noise."

"We have the chaos emerald," Gladiolus said, "but the walls are covered in hepatizon, so we can't teleport out. Hold on. I'm going to try something."

There were a series of soft taps near the door's lowest hinge. After a moment, the odor of hot metal reached his nose.

"Glad," Knuckles whispered, "what in the world are you doing?"

The hinge bent, then fell to the floor with a clank. The metal had been cut as if with a welding torch. "It's the chaos emerald," Glad said. "It's making this really hot flame."

"That's more like it," Shadow said.

Knuckles watched, bemused, as the other hinges were cut through the same way. "Push," he said, bracing his hands against the door.

The only thing holding the door in place was the lock. With Glad and Shadow pushing, the lock broke with a sharp ping. Knuckles caught the door as it fell, easing it across the hall to lean against the wall. He turned in time to catch Glad as she flung herself into his arms.

"You came," she whispered. "I've been so stupid. I can't believe you came."

He kissed the top of her head, a sense of contentment washing through him at her very presence. She was alive and still fighting to escape. And now here she was, no longer aloof, clinging to him. He could have stood there forever, holding her.

"Are you all right?" he murmured.

Glad pulled away and gazed at him. Her chaos eye, without its eyepatch, was blind and sick-looking. She raised one hand and touched the side of her face. Black crystals covered the backs of her arms, traveling up her shoulders and neck to her cheeks. It was so alien, so awful, that Knuckles's eyes reeled away from her. He glanced at Shadow, instead.

The black hedgehog stood against the wall, trying to avoid the chao, which was poking at his shoes with a curious paw.

Shadow shot Knuckles a dirty look. "Yeah, Glad's not doing well. You'd better marry her and lift the curse, or I'll make you wish you'd stayed in Bygone as the village idiot."

"We're still on," Knuckles growled, forcing himself to look at Glad again. He took one of her hands and touched the crystals on the back. They were hard, like bits of glass embedded in her skin. "I mean, if you're sure you want to."

Glad nodded violently.

Knuckles touched her cheek. "Does it hurt?"

She looked at him self-consciously. "No. It's really horrific, I know. You don't have to look at me if you don't want." She tried to pull her coat sleeves down over the crystals on her arms, but the fabric snagged.

"Glad," Knuckles said, "this is Chaos's fault, not yours. I won't punish you for that. Come on, let's go."

Glad handed him the chaos emerald. "We can't go yet. Shadow still has the rings."

Shadow stepped around the chao and held out his wrists. "We've got to get them off. I can't chaos control until we do."

Knuckles looked up and down the hall. "Where do they keep the tools around here?"

Suddenly the lights dimmed. There was a distant roar, like a jet taking off. It screamed away overhead, rattling the walls.

"That was a rocket," Shadow said, head tilted.

Knuckles glared at the ceiling. "Eggman's shooting at Angel Island already, blast him. We're not ready!"

"Come on," Glad said. "Tails left his cutters in my room. We might be able to get the rings off there." She dashed up the hall. Knuckles and Shadow followed her.


	14. Chapter 14

On Angel Island, Ramussan blasted a warning to the headsets of his crew. "Alert! Alert! Incoming missile! ETA four minutes!"

Sonic reached the control room first, followed by Amy, Sticks, and Metal Sonic. "A missile!" he exclaimed, staring at the screens. "Eggman!"

"What do we do?" Amy cried. She and Sticks clung to each other.

Sonic looked wildly around. "Where's Tails? And Knux?"

"I'm here, Sonic," Tails said through the headset. "I'm downstairs, replacing a fuse. Then we can charge the ARK cannon."

"Stay down there, it's safer," Sonic said. "Knux! Where are you?"

"He's attempting to rescue Gladiolus and Shadow," Ramussan said. "He was hoping to return before this firefight started."

Sonic groaned and dragged his fingers through his quills. "Being the hero again, right. Ram, can we shoot the missile down? Deflect it somehow?"

The screens changed to show the missile's estimated path. It was traveling in an arc that would impact on Angel Island's central peak.

"Eggman intends to cripple us in one stroke," Ramussan said. "We have no shields and no defenses at this time. I suggest evasive maneuvers."

"This is a floating island!" Amy exclaimed. "It can't just dodge!"

Another screen displayed Angel Island's potential movements. If it accelerated, the missile's arc would be too high, and it would impact far out on the western side. If the island dropped into the ocean, the missile's arc might miss it entirely.

"Do that one," Sonic said. "Land us."

"I recommend that all of you lie on the floor," Ramussan said. "This may damage the island."

All of them dropped flat. Tails, downstairs, finished his work on the fuse, then he braced himself in a doorway.

"Two minutes left," Sonic muttered. "Oh, it is so on, Eggman."

"Knuckles can't escape," Sticks said suddenly. "He's trapped between fire and water. Only the wind can help him."

"What are you talking about?" Amy said.

"Nothing," Sticks said. "I wish I was out there with that missile. I'd knock it out of the sky with my boomerang!"

"And get blown up," Sonic said. "One minute left."

Angel Island plunged from the sky. Sonic's stomach flipped as if he was riding a high-speed elevator. Amy gasped. Sticks said, "Wheeee!" Metal Sonic said nothing, but braced himself against the wall.

Then they hit the ocean. The impact rattled them around the control room like seeds in a gourd. The palace groaned. Rocks fell somewhere. Dust clouded the air. Slowly the noise and shaking subsided.

Sonic scrambled to his feet, coughing in the dust. "Everybody okay?"

Amy, Sticks, and Metal climbed to their feet, rubbing their bruised elbows and knees. "Let's never do that again," Amy said.

"Missile passing overhead," Ramussan announced. "Maneuver successful. Island sustained minor damage."

"Fixable damage, right?" Sonic said.

"You need not worry about it for now," Ramussan said. "Tails, I need you to inspect the ARK cannon before I attempt to charge it. The last time we fired it, there was chance of catastrophic failure. That will have only increased."

"I have parts now!" Tails exclaimed. "The Fellstorm was loaded with conduit, optical crys-glass, and every kind of electrical component!"

"I shall accompany you," Metal Sonic said over the headset. The pair hurried out of the control room, toward the passages that led downstairs.

"I'm going outside," Sonic said, and dashed for the upper stairs.

Outside, it was late afternoon, the sun turning orange away over Bygone on the right. Sonic followed the path away from the west door and climbed the nearest hill to get above the trees. There he shaded his eyes and stared skyward.

A smoky trail arced away from Eggman's base, over Angel Island, and vanished into the sea just beyond their southeastern flank. The breeze was already starting to waft it away.

It wasn't until then that Sonic realized the reality of their danger. It had only been pictures on a screen, like a video game, just a fun challenge. But now, standing there and watching the missile's exhaust trail drift across the sky, a creeping shiver overtook him. This was real. They could have died. Eggman was trying to actually kill them.

Sonic was still standing there when Amy found him. "That was close," she said, watching the smoke trail fade into rags. When he didn't reply, the pink hedgehog peered at him. "Are you all right?"

Sonic forced a smile. "Sure I'm all right. Eggman almost blew a hole in the island, but he missed. I'm sure that was his only missile, right? We're fine. It's not like it would have caved in the whole palace on our heads. Or blown up the chaos reactor. No, everything is fine!"

"Sonic," Amy said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

He shut his mouth and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. "Sorry, Aimes. It just kind of ... hit home how dangerous this is."

She patted his shoulder. "We've faced NME. We can handle Eggman, too."

"I hope so." Sonic gazed anxiously toward Eggman's fortress, still many miles away. "How long until he fires again, do you think?"

Amy looked, too, her expression hardening. "I think he's scared of having holes blasted in him. He tried to cripple us with a preemptive strike, but it failed. I think he'll try again in the next hour."

Her words rang true in Sonic's mind. They had their enemy cornered, and the teeth had emerged. Maybe it would be better to back off. Let Eggman relax a little. Regroup and try again later.

"I have an idea," Sonic said. He switched on his headset. "Ramussan, get us airborne again. Then change course and head out to sea. Let Eggman think we're running away. Once it's dark, we'll double back."

"A cunning plan, Warrior," Ramussan said. "Prepare for launch in ten minutes."

* * *

"They ducked!" Eggman snarled, banging a fist on the arm of his chair. "How can a whole island duck?"

He sat in his own control room, watching a wall of monitors that featured read-outs from scanners, spy drones, and base operations. The missile had followed its programmed trajectory perfectly. It wasn't his fault that his massive target had suddenly moved.

"The reactor is heating up," Orbot observed, pointing at a scanner screen. "What are they planning?"

"Probably a counter-attack," Eggman growled. "Shield generators to full!" He spun a dial on his console. The lights dimmed a little as power was diverted to the shields around his base. But he doubted that they'd stand up to whatever the ARK cannon fired. Some kind of compressed plasma beam, perhaps. The Fellstorm had been constructed of the most state of the art materials, with armor that could repel a small nuke. And that ARK cannon had cored the Fellstorm.

Eggman watched in suspense as Angel Island slowly floated out of the water, rising into the sky once more. His next missile was loaded and ready, but he was loath to throw this one into the ocean, too. Missiles were expensive.

Angel Island altered course. Instead of continuing directly toward Eggman's island, it turned due north and flew out to sea.

"Ah, they're running," Eggman said, relaxing a little. "Good move, Knuckles. You know you're no match for me."

"They'll probably circle back," Orbot said.

"Yes, I know," Eggman said. "But for now, we have a breathing space."

He sat there for a long moment, watching Angel Island to make sure it was leaving. Absently he took a drink from a water bottle, then paused to study the clear liquid swirling inside.

Eggman switched main screens to display a map of his base's plumbing system. "I want every valve shut tight and every drain stopped. Not a drop gets in or out, understand?"

Robots scurried to carry out these strange orders. Orbot and Cubot looked at their master curiously.

"Doctor," Orbot said, "what about this section, here? The drains are not flagged for closure."

"That's the north wing," Eggman growled. "I'm not stupid enough to stand between Chaos and his prey. I just don't intend to become collateral damage."

* * *

Gladiolus ran down the hall, heedless of the clanging of her boots on the metal floor plates. Knuckles had come to rescue her. She was going to free Shadow, and they'd all escape. It didn't matter if the scientists noticed them-Knuckles would deal with them. Her confidence in him was enormous, coupled with her own sense of invincibility.

_I am horrible looking. Nobody wants to touch me. I'm dying. So who cares about caution!_

Glad flung open the door to her room and charged inside. Tails's shears had been kicked under the bed in the scuffle with Hazard. She yanked them out and slapped them into Knuckles's hands before he could step through the door.

He looked at them in bemusement. "Tails's bolt-cutters?"

"Don't question it," Shadow said, holding out both hands. "Cut off these rings. Then I need my gold bands back."

Knuckles carefully wiggled the lower blade between Shadow's skin and the metal. "We should just go."

"You don't understand," Shadow said though his teeth. "Without my gold bands, my power is too great. A chaos control becomes a fiery comet of instant destruction. I dare not risk it until they're back on."

Knuckles snipped both wrist bands, and very carefully removed the one around Shadow's neck. Compared to the swift, dangerous way Shadow had removed the bands from everyone else, Glad admired Knuckles's care.

She kept watch, looking up and down the hall. "The robot patrols have stopped."

"That's good, right?" Knuckles said without looking up.

"No," Glad said slowly, "I don't think it is." She crept to the nearest door, opened it, and peered in. Three nurses were inside, hastily jamming supplies into duffle bags. As she watched, they hurried toward her.

She narrowly missed being hit in the face by the door as it swung open. The humans stared at the echidnas and hedgehog.

"Escaped prisoners," one said.

"Doesn't matter," said another. "Eggman tells the staff to leave, we leave."

They hoisted their bags and hustled down the hall toward the vault door into Eggman's base.

"Well," Shadow said, "that was weird."

"It's because Eggman and Angel Island are shooting at each other," Knuckles said. "Nice of Eggman to protect his people. I didn't know he cared."

"People are expensive," Shadow muttered. "At least we don't have to worry about fighting them."

Glad picked up the chao, which was watching all this with interest. "They didn't pay attention to you. You're identical to the other chao."

"Other chao?" Knuckles looked up from working on Shadow's left ankle band. "What other chao?"

"The one that came up the drain," Glad replied. "Dr. Lewis took it."

Knuckles gaped at her, then Shadow. "Dear Fith! These things are avatars of Chaos. Maria is terrified of them."

"Me too," Shadow muttered. "How can you stand to touch it?"

Glad looked at the chao, absently stroking its soft head with one marred, crystal-studded hand. "Because I'm just as much of a monster as it is."

Knuckles pulled off the last band. Shadow rubbed his wrists and ankles with a sigh of relief.

"You're not a monster," Knuckles told Glad fiercely. "Chaos is the monster. He made you this way."

"Actually," said a new voice, "monster is a misnomer."

Dr. Lewis was advancing toward them from one direction. Gerald came from the other. Both of them carried stun guns at their shoulders, covering the three. For a pair of white-haired old men, they walked awfully straight and strong, and the gun barrels were rock-steady.

Shadow sucked in his breath, spines bristling. "You won't take me again!"

Knuckles silently reached for Glad's hand. She palmed him the chaos emerald.

Dr. Lewis continued, "A monster is something that happens by accident. We created no monsters. We created weapons. You, Shadow, are a glorious weapon."

"With amazing potential," Gerald added. "You and Maria together are an unstoppable powerhouse of chaos energy. When I find her, I will refine you both into the ultimate life form."

"You people are sick," Shadow spat. "You changed us, ruined us. I could destroy this whole place in a second."

"He could, you know," Knuckles said. "He needs his gold bands."

Gerald focused on Knuckles, covering him with his weapon. "Look at this new one, Gunther. It's a moon echidna. I thought their bloodline died out decades ago. Do you know what secrets lie in the genome of moon echidnas?"

Lewis and Gerald stared at Knuckles with hungry, predatory looks.

"You know," Knuckles said, hooking an arm through Glad's blackening one, "I think you're wrong about monsters. Monsters happen by choice." He laid a hand on Shadow's shoulder. "And you two are the real monsters." His whisper of, "Chaos control," was almost too soft to hear.

The Mobians blinked out of the hallway and reappeared in an empty exam room where the door stood open.

Glad whimpered and pulled away from Knuckles. The surge of chaos power had sent a wave of pain through her skin, letting her feel the exact location of every single crystal. It was like having a million splinters. She examined her arms, expecting to see blood. Instead, all the crystals had grown a fraction.

Shadow twisted away from Knuckles, too, lightning flickering across his red stripes. He closed his eyes and drew deep breaths. The lightning slowly died away. "That was way too dangerous," he panted, leaning against the wall. "You almost set off my power by proxy."

Knuckles stepped between Shadow and Glad, and stood there like a wall until Shadow had regained full control. "We'll find your bands. Anybody know where they are?"

"They'll be near our prison," Glad blurted. "They took them off before they put us in there."

"Great," Knuckles said. "Lead on."

Glad didn't know where they were, but she faked confidence and set out into the quiet halls. It was eerily silent with the staff gone. There was no sound from Gerald or Lewis. They were probably creeping along, listening for the Mobians. Glad walked on the balls of her feet, pausing to investigate each junction, moving softly. The chao rode in the crook of her arm, observing in silence.

They were almost back to the prison room when Dr. Lewis rounded a corner and barred the way. He had been carrying the stun gun on his shoulder. As he swung it down into firing position, Knuckles leaped forward. "I don't think so!" He yanked the gun out of Lewis's hand and bent it in half in one smooth movement.

Lewis slapped Knuckles on the side of the head.

It was an open-handed slap, delivered feebly. It shouldn't have fazed the echidna at all. Instead, the blow knocked Knuckles sideways into the wall so hard that his shoulder left a dent in the wallboard.

Glad's mouth fell open. Dr. Lewis was an old man! How was he so strong?

"What the hell," Shadow breathed, backing away.

Knuckles swayed to his feet, holding his shoulder. "You are _not_ human," he said, backing out of Lewis's reach.

The old scientist smiled behind his glasses. "Cybernetic therapy is an amazing thing. I was tired of being outdone physically by a lot of talking animals." He strode toward Knuckles, one fist clenched.

This time when Lewis swung, Knuckles blocked the blow with one arm. He followed it up with a solid punch to Lewis's chest that should have caved in his ribcage. Instead, the human merely staggered backward a few steps, regained his balance, and charged at Knuckles again.

Glad didn't know what to do. She'd known the scientists were stronger than she was, but they were stronger than everyone. No wonder they had been able to tie Sonic down. Her instincts screamed to run away. Knuckles fought with a shocked expression. Nobody ever tested his strength like this.

Shadow tugged Glad away from the fight. "This way," he whispered, pulling her around a corner and down another hall. "Knuckles can handle Gunther. I've got to find my bands before-"

He opened a door. Standing on the other side was Hazard, the burly black robot. In his clawed hands were Shadow's gold bands.

"Looking for these?" said the robot.

Glad backed away until she hit the wall, a scream rising in her throat. Another enemy she had no hope of defeating. The robot didn't spare her a glance-all his attention was fixed on Shadow.

Shadow stood with his fists clenched at his sides, head lowered. "Yes," he said in a low voice. "If you don't want this base to vanish in a fireball, you'll return those."

Hazard stepped forward. "Or I could grab you again."

Shadow snatched the bands out of Hazard's hands faster than the eye could follow. Then he bolted up the hall. Hazard charged after him. Glad watched them go, hands pressed to her mouth.

Knuckles skidded around the other corner and ran toward her. "Run! Run!"

The echidnas raced up the hall. Dr. Lewis Gunther was behind them, and to Glad's bemused eyes, he had grown taller. He strode after them, grinning, his limbs lengthening, flowing like snakes.

"He's got those extendable limbs," Knuckles panted. "You let that guy work on you?"

"He didn't have snake limbs before!" Glad exclaimed.

Knuckles pointed. "Is that Metal Sonic ahead of us?"

"It's Hazard. He's chasing Shadow. Hazard is made of that hepatizon we found."

Knuckles gave her a brief, horrified glance. "What kind of nut house is this?"

"We need to find an exit!" Glad exclaimed. "The only one I've seen leads into Eggman's base, but there's got to be others, right?"

"Fire exits or something," Knuckles agreed.

Up ahead, Shadow and Hazard were grappling, fighting and snarling, black fur and black metal. After a few seconds, Shadow tore free and ran back toward them, Hazard in pursuit. "Gerald's up ahead!"

And Lewis was behind. Glad looked at him and wished she hadn't. His arms and legs had stretched into long, silver, octopus-like arms, whipping him along the passage as fast as they could run. He wore a grin that was part grimace, as if controlling this extension of himself was hard work.

Shadow, Knuckles and Glad met in the middle, enemies before and behind them.

"What do we do?" Glad whispered, clutching the chao like a security blanket.

"Surrender," Dr. Lewis replied. He blocked the passage with his serpentine limbs, coiling against the floor and ceiling. "You belong to us, Shadow and Gladiolus. We made you. You are our property."

"That's sick," Knuckles spat. "Just because you tortured them in a lab doesn't make them yours."

"Yes, it does," Lewis replied. "You, on the other hand, will merely be a prisoner. We'll harvest your DNA for years. Imagine! Recreating the chaos wizards of old!"

Hazard stood in the middle of the hall to their right, arms loose, clawed hands open for grabbing. Gerald walked up behind him, looking like an older Eggman with a white mustache. He carried the other chao in the crook of one arm.

"Lewis," he sighed, "why must you show off?"

Lewis drummed his fingers on the ceiling. "So they'll come quietly. It's best that they know I have the strength to rip them in half."

Gerald held up the chao in both hands. "This creature is astonishing. It can alter its shape under various forms of stimuli. For instance." He pulled a taser out of his pocket and flicked it on. A tiny spark of electricity danced between its two prongs. "When exposed to electrical shock." He pressed the taser against the chao's head.

The chao screamed exactly like a hurt child. Its blue color turned bright yellow and its head elongated for a moment. Gerald withdrew the taser, and the chao snapped back to its normal color and shape.

"Don't!" Glad cried. "That's cruel!"

The chao in her arms made a growling sound, far too deep and resonant to come from such a small creature. At the same time, every drain in the place began to gurgle.

"Now you've done it," Knuckles said. He turned and punched a hole in the nearest wall. The wall caved in like gingerbread. In seconds Knuckles had torn a hole big enough to walk through. He waved Glad through.

As she leaped through the wall into another room, one of Lewis's mechanical hands clamped onto Knuckles's arm. It dragged him out of sight. Shadow leaped into the room, dropped into a red-tinged spin dash, and cut through the next wall himself.

Glad went back for Knuckles.

Octopus-Lewis, Hazard, and Gerald were all struggling with the big red echidna, trying to bind him with black bands. Knuckles fought with punches and kicks, and one of Hazard's eyes was badly cracked. Then Lewis's arms snaked around Knuckles's throat and forced him to his knees.

Red fury welled up in Glad's heart. Wasn't it bad enough that seeing Knuckles shot still haunted her nightmares? Now she'd have to watch him be imprisoned and tortured, too. Not this time. Not while she still drew breath.

Lewis had his back to Glad, his mechanical legs retracted almost to normal length. Glad held up both her arms, jagged crystal points outward. She ran at him in silence and drove the crystals into his back with all her strength.

It hurt her, but it hurt Lewis more. He was driven into the wall with a howl, dropping Knuckles, limbs flailing as he lost the focus to control them. Knuckles tore free of Gerald and Hazard's groping hands, sprang over Lewis, and dragged Glad through the hole in the wall.

"Nice," he panted as they ducked through the hole Shadow had made.

"I'm a weapon, right?" Glad replied.

"I don't think that's what they had in mind," Knuckles replied.


	15. Chapter 15

Behind them, silver, writhing limbs slithered through the hole. Lewis was tearing his way after them, teeth bared in a snarl. One of his arms coiled around a support beam and snapped it, forcing it out of his way. The ceiling groaned and sagged.

"Idiot!" Knuckles shouted over his shoulder. "You'll bring the whole place down!"

"As long as I have you two, I don't care," Lewis bellowed.

Knuckles and Glad ducked out of the last hole into a hallway. Water splashed around their feet. Everywhere was the ominous splashing of overflowing sinks and toilets. The air stank of sewer and sea water.

Shadow was waiting for them, eyes wide, breathing too fast. He was reliving the nightmare of the old lab, when Chaos had flooded in and killed without mercy. "It's happening again!" he cried. "Chaos is coming!"

"Right," Knuckles said. "Let's make an exit."

He and Shadow tore straight through the walls of hallways and rooms, Glad following in their wake. Lewis crawled behind them, widening the holes, his limbs splashing and throwing water all the way to the ceiling.

Glad wanted to run, but it was impossible to wade and climb and duck all at once. The dirty water rose around her ankles, then her knees. Lewis was gaining on them. Any second she expected to feel his cold, powerful limbs curl around her. All she wanted to do was escape, see the sky, breathe the air, and run for her life.

As they crossed another hall, the chao she carried looked up at her. "Time to play now," it said. It wriggled out of her arms, plopped into the water, and vanished. Glad stared at the spot where it had been and fought the urge to scream. Horrible things were about to happen. Her father had escaped a similar disaster, and she was determined to do the same.

"You blasted Mobians brought this on yourselves!" Lewis yelled, tearing through a wall. "You'll wear the hepatizon for the rest of your lives!"

Knuckles punched through a door and extended a hand to Glad. She took his hand and glimpsed his face. He was looking past her, at Dr. Lewis, and there was a deadly expression in his eyes. She thought suddenly of how he had punched the cliff so hard that it left a crater. If it came to a real fight, Lewis's cybernetics may not be such an advantage, after all.

The rushing water took on a deeper tone, and a wave curled down the hallway between the scientist and the echidnas. She carefully didn't look at it. She didn't want to see the pointed dragon jaws, the jagged teeth, the searching green eyes. Lewis saw it, gasped, and scrambled backward into the hole. The wave poured after him, gently, lazily.

"Chaos bought us some time," Glad said.

Knuckles nodded. "Probably not as much as we think. There's not enough water yet."

Shadow was tearing at the outer wall of the building. He peeled off wallboard and insulation to reveal a layer of brick. Knuckles struck it with a powerful punch that shattered mortar and cracked stone. The wall crumbled, and beyond was darkness, stars, and a burst of fresh air.

Water poured out in a waterfall. Glad stumbled through the hole, Knuckles catching her hand to support her against the weight of the water. It streamed past them and vanished into space a few feet away.

"It's a cliff," Shadow said.

That was an understatement. Knuckles's grip on Glad's hand tightened as they recovered their bearings. They were two hundred feet above the sea, standing on a narrow rim of rock between the lab building and space. Water shot out of the hole in the wall at greater and greater speed, eating away the wall on either side.

"The whole place will collapse in a minute," Shadow said, his voice rough with panic. "I can't-" He was trying to fasten the gold bands around his wrists, but his hands shook too much.

"Wait," Glad said, reaching toward him. "I can help-"

But Shadow's terror was beyond any ability to reason. He snatched the green chaos emerald from Knuckles, then ran off the cliff and screamed, "Chaos control!"

Without the bands to buffer his power, Shadow became an orange rocket that shot across the sea, leaving a trail of red smoke. His light reflected in the dark sea, then illuminated Angel Island for a split second before it went out.

"I hope he survived," Knuckles said in shock. "Jerk stole my emerald!"

Glad closed her good eye, peering into the night with her chaos eye. Angel Island appeared in shades of red, green, and blue. "The island is about two miles away. It's down in the water. I think ... but ... no."

"What?" Knuckles said. "Should we swim it?"

There was a huge thump from the building at their backs. A silvery, flexible arm curled out of the hole in the wall. The fingers grabbed the bricks, curled like claws. Knuckles pulled Gladiolus away from it, keeping himself between her and the enemy.

"I could glide!" Glad exclaimed desperately. "And carry you like a hanglider!"

Knuckles shot her a frown. "Glad, I'm twice your size! It'd never work!"

A second arm shot out of the hole, flipping up and down and side to side, feeling for them. Knuckles and Glad edged a little further from it, but there was nowhere else to go on their tiny ledge.

"Gliding is my power," she said fiercely, pulling off the band that held her dreadlocks out of her face. "It's what I was made for. Dr. Lewis is coming after us, and Chaos is after him. We have to try!"

Knuckles scanned the cliff left and right. On the left, the building hung out in space, supported only on metal struts. To the right, the narrow lip of rock continued for half a mile. There was no room to battle a human-octopus. Or the walls could breach at any time. Either way, they faced a deadly two-hundred foot fall to rocks and sea.

"Fine," he said. "But be ready to swim if you can't keep airborne."

"Let me stand on your shoulders," she said. "Hold my hands, then run and jump off."

Knuckles started to argue, but Lewis's head and shoulders emerged from the hole. The human stared around, disoriented, water dripping from his chin.

"This is insane," Knux muttered. But he knelt and let Glad climb onto his shoulders. She locked wrists with him, praying that her grip wouldn't slip.

The motion attracted Lewis's attention. He swung an arm in their direction, the fingers grasping. "No! Gladiolus, you're nowhere nearly strong enough!"

"Go!" Glad cried, shaking out her dreadlocks with a flip of her head.

Lewis's mechanical hand closed on Knuckles's leg. Knuckles twisted sideways and stomped it with his free foot. The arm lost its grip. Before it could reattach, Knuckles ran and leaped off the cliff into the night. Lewis's arms reached after them, and he cried out in despair.

For a long moment the echidnas fell. Glad felt the wind gather under her dreadlocks, felt it slow their descent. Knuckles was so heavy! It would take lots of wind to lift him-more than she had ever needed. She gathered it in, clinging to his wrists grimly, steering their drop into a smooth curve. The ocean drew nearer. Knuckles gripped her wrists tightly, but made no sound. Glad's determination grew-he trusted her, and she wouldn't fail him by crashing into the water.

They cleared the wedge of Eggman's island that had blocked the wind. Its full force caught Glad, filling her hair like a sail. They swooped skyward, the ocean falling away below. Her heart thrilled in triumph.

Knuckles drew a long breath. "Glad, you're amazing!"

"I can get us there," she said through her teeth. Any movement of her head affected their flight, so she held her neck rigid. Despite the wind's glorious lift, Knuckles's weight dragged at her shoulders, threatening to dislocate them. Her hands already wanted to let go of his wrists. If he had not gripped her so tightly, she might have dropped him. She peered toward Angel Island. Surely they were halfway there by now. But no, it remained a darker lump on the horizon, so far away.

"What's that light?" Knuckles said suddenly.

Glad looked. A brilliant white beacon had sprung to life on Angel Island's topmost peak. "Is it a lighthouse?"

Knuckles gasped. "It's the ARK cannon! Go left, go left!"

Glad banked to the left, fear prickling along her back and shoulders. She was between Angel Island and Eggman's island-right in the firing range. Instinct screamed to dive into the ocean. "Should we drop?"

"No, keep gliding-"

The white light brightened. A beam fired out of it in a blinding line, tracing from Angel Island to Eggman's base with a crack like a lightning bolt. The ocean was illuminated in shades of blue-green. The blast heated the air, kicking the wind into eddies and confused gusts. Glad rode it as best as she could, like terrible waves in the air that tried to capsize her.

"Sonic, what are you doing?" Knuckles twisted around, trying to see where the beam hit. "It took the top off Eggman's tower!"

"He won't be happy about that," Glad panted.

* * *

When Shadow had shot toward Angel Island like a rocket, that's what the crew assumed he was: another attack from Eggman.

"That's it!" Sonic exclaimed, watching the Shadow-rocket shoot toward Angel Island. "I'm sick of Eggy taking potshots at us. Ramussan, time to blow crap up."

They had fled north until the sun set, then looped back and settled into the sea under cover of darkness. Tails had made a few minor repairs to the cannon and declared it functional. It had only been charging a few hours.

"The ARK cannon is fifty-percent charged," Ramussan replied.

"Then fire at one-half power," Sonic said. He glared into the control room's monitors. "Knux, wherever you are, I hope this buys you time."

* * *

Eggman's shields disintegrated under the ARK cannon's onslaught. Eggman, who had been nervously watching the north wing fill with water, ran to his control room. Every screen was red with alerts.

It took him a few panicked moments of wading through reports to figure out that the shields had failed and the communications relay was gone. This caused a cascade of other errors that bogged down his system.

Ten minutes later, Eggman had shut down enough secondary systems to regain control. By this time, his panic had turned to outrage. "You're going to use me as target practice? Two can play at that game!"

He launched his largest missile at Angel Island, taking pride in the screech as it split the night sky with orange light.

* * *

Glad couldn't watch the missile launch, but Knuckles did. "Oh no," he said. "Eggman's fired another missile."

"Should I change course?" Glad said above him. Her voice was tight with strain and weariness.

"No, we're far enough west that we're out of its path."

Knuckles clung to her wrists, feeling her weakening grip. She was strong, but she had been through all kinds of garbage in that lab. When had she last had a meal? Or slept? He was afraid to bring it up. Encouraging her to focus on her own weakness would send them crashing into the sea.

The missile screamed overhead, the light in its afterburner shining like a small sun. On Angel Island, the ARK cannon flared to life once more.

"Shut your eyes!" Knuckles commanded.

He turned his face away as the ARK cannon fired like a bolt of lightning. It lit the whole ocean, turning the black waves blue. It illuminated the trees and hills of Angel Island in stark white light, slashed by black shadows.

The missile exploded in midair with a report like a cannon. The concussion struck Glad and Knuckles, making them grunt and stagger in the air.

"They hit it!" Knuckles cheered. "Way to go, guys!"

"I just want to get there," Gladiolus said faintly. "Can't they stop shooting?"

"Not until we get home and show them you're alive," Knuckles said. "You're the reason this has escalated so far."

"Wow," Glad said. "I didn't realize I mattered enough to make everyone shoot at each other."

Her voice was so tired. Knuckles had to keep her talking, keep her focused. "Of course you matter, Glad! We all care about you. I think even Shadow does."

"What about you?" Her tone was timid. "Do I matter to you?"

He peered up at her. She flew with her eyes fixed straight ahead, her lips pressed together. Black crystals broke the outlines of her arms and shoulders, glittering in the starlight. She was taxed to her physical limits, carrying both him and the cursed stone. And, perhaps, emotionally, she was stretched, too.

"You matter to me," Knuckles said in a low voice. "I've brought the whole island out here to force them to give you back."

She glanced down at him, her fingers tightening a little on his wrists. "Knuckles ... when I was in the lab, and the crystals appeared ... nobody wanted to touch me. They treated me like I had a plague."

"It's a curse, remember?" Knuckles said. "That's all it is. And we know how to break it."

Her eyes dropped to the ocean for a second. "I might die any time. The way these crystals are growing-"

"Chaos gave me seven days from yesterday," Knuckles said. "He was going to kill you straight off."

She smiled and returned her gaze to Angel Island. The breeze carrying them strengthened. "He did? You fought him?"

"Argued and pleaded, more like," Knuckles said. "He's treating this as some kind of wager. Like he doesn't think you're brave enough to marry me."

"He said you were too good for me," Glad said humbly. "He knew your measure. It made me realize how stupid I was being. I mean, if Chaos thinks that highly of you, how could I not?"

Chaos had said that? Wow. Knuckles blessed the darkness that hid the heat rushing to his cheeks. Apparently, facing off with immortals tended to win their respect.

There was a burst of noise from Eggman's fortress. Three smaller rockets shot skyward, cutting toward Angel Island in a high arc.

"Those will get through," Knuckles said, watching them.

"Oh, they're firing the ARK cannon again," Glad groaned. "Please, please, no more!"

As the orb fired its beam of lightning-bright light, Glad's strength wavered. The hot backwash of wind threw them about, and they plunged fifteen feet, caught the air, then fell another ten.

Glad made an incoherent, sobbing cry.

"You can do it!" Knuckles shouted over the wind's roar. "Just concentrate!"

One of the rockets evaporated into orange flame far overhead. The two others fell onto Angel Island, impacting in the hills on the far side of the central mountain. The dull thunder of the explosions rolled across the water. Knuckles snarled.

"I'm so tired," Glad sobbed. "I can't do it, Knuckles. My shoulders are about to break."

"We're almost there!" Knuckles exclaimed. "Barely five hundred feet! Look!"

Glad faced the island with tears running down her cheeks. "I can do this," she said, drawing deep breaths. "It's so close!" A little wind swirled under them, lifting them away from the waves that rolled by, twenty feet from Knuckles's shoes.

"Talk to me," Knuckles said. "How are you able to glide like this?"

"It's the way they engineered my dad's dreadlocks," Glad replied. "I inherited the trait. It turns us into living hangliders. The Speaker said that once the curse was broken, he'd make me wind-weaver."

"Wind-weaver?" Knuckles said, rolling the title around in his mind. He'd expected her to be the island's cartographer or something. A wind-weaver sounded far more exotic. "I like it. What's it mean?"

"This," Glad said. "The way we're flying. I had to gather up so much more wind than normal to hold us up. I didn't think about it until now. I'm controlling the wind, Knuckles."

His heart swelled with pride. "I knew you had powers."

"I don't know where they come from," Glad murmured. "I don't have a chaos emerald."

"Think what you could do if you had one!" Knuckles forced too much enthusiasm into his voice. Her grip was looser, and his own muscles were tiring, shoulders aching like mad. They were slowly descending, dropping toward the waves.

"I'm so tired," Glad said.

"Don't think about it," Knuckles said. "We're almost there. Three hundred more feet."

"I sort of slept last night," Glad said. "The way you do in hospitals. And I had that dream about Chaos cursing me. When I saw the crystals, I was so scared. But then ... nobody wanted to touch me. I'm awful looking. Nobody tried to stop me doing things. So I stole the chaos emerald. But I'm so tired."

They were dipping lower and lower. The wind was deserting Glad. But Angel Island was right there-less than a hundred feet away.

"Only a few more minutes," Knuckles pleaded. "Make that wind do its job, wind-weaver."

She inhaled deeply. The wind strengthened, lifting them, propelling them forward. "I think ... I like it when you call me that."

"You can call me Guardian, I guess," Knuckles said, grinning. "Ramussan does, and I'm kind of getting used to it."

"I'd rather call you sweetheart," she said shyly. "Since that's what you are."

His stomach swooped giddily in a way that had nothing to do with their headlong flight.

Suddenly there was ground below them-jagged rocks and trees. Glad banked wearily to the right, carried by a weakening breeze, and dropped out of the air on an open, sandy place. Knuckles landed hard, his numb feet screaming in pain at the impact. He staggered, catching Glad as she fell. His legs buckled under her weight and they collapsed together. His legs had lost all feeling and he could barely move his arms. So he lay beside Glad, panting, gazing at the stars.

"Are you okay?" he whispered.

She turned her head, cushioned on her long dreadlocks. "I can't believe I did that." Her fingers brushed his arm. "You're built like a house. And you weigh as much as one."

He grinned and moved his arm enough to clasp her hand. "Love you."

"Love you," she replied. "I'd kiss you if I could move."

Knuckles laughed. "Same here." He levered himself to a sitting position using his wrists and elbows. He fully intended to kiss her, but in the distance, an ominous yellow light ignited in Eggman's fortress.

"More missiles," Knuckles muttered. "We've got to get inside. Can you walk?"

Glad struggled to sit up. She fell onto all fours and sat there, panting. "I'm so weak. I can barely move."

Knuckles rose to his feet. While his shoulders and upper back ached, the rest of him felt strong enough. "I can carry you, if you want."

Glad tried to stand, dropped back to all fours, and nodded. "I don't want to die from a missile after surviving everything else. That's so pointless."

Knuckles carefully slipped his arms under her knees and shoulders and lifted her off her feet. The sharp crystals on her arms scratched him, and she felt heavier than she should have because of the stone. Knuckles's shoulders protested, but he shrugged it off. He set off at a stiff walk, trusting his ancient memories of Angel Island to guide him toward the west door.

They had landed further south than he had been before, so he wound up struggling through the dense jungle in the dark, cursing under his breath. After a while he found himself in the ravine that led to the gate, and followed it carefully, mindful of slippery rocks and wildlife.

By the time he reached the gate, Gladiolus was asleep in his arms, her crystal-studded face resting against the crescent on his chest. He bent his head and kissed her cheek as he opened the door. "You sweet thing," he whispered. "I'll always be your Guardian."

He carried Glad into the safety of the palace, the Master Emerald's peace permeating his being. He descended the grand staircase and entered the main hall. It echoed with his friends' voices, arguing and shouting over each other from the control room. He followed the noise, summoning the willpower to deal with one more problem.

"Let's hit him again!" Sonic was yelling. "Take him out before he fires!"

"We should try to negotiate, Sonic," Amy snapped. "It'll only get worse from here. Look at the size of that artillery he's prepping!"

"It's war!" Sonic cut across her. "Offense is our only defense! We've got to hit him before he launches more rockets!"

Knuckles stepped into the doorway and stood there, holding Glad, waiting for a break in the argument. Sonic and Amy were shouting in each other's faces. Sticks was watching them and chewing her fingernails. After a moment, she turned a little and caught sight of Knuckles.

"Hey!" she cried.

The tone in her voice interrupted Sonic and Amy. They whirled around and gaped at Knuckles and Glad.

"Knux!" Sonic exclaimed. "Where'd you come from?"

"Are you all right?" Amy said. "What happened to Gladiolus?"

"It doesn't matter," Knuckles replied. "Cease fire." His voice had an air of authority that ended the previous argument. "Shadow's here somewhere. He was that first rocket that started you shooting. Glad is safe. Call Eggman. Declare a cease fire. This is over."

Without waiting for any questions, he turned and headed for the bunker with his precious burden.

"They look awful," Amy said behind him. "How did they get back? They didn't swim."

"They flew," Sticks said. "I told you that only the wind could help them."

Sonic groaned. "You and your riddles. Now I have to call Eggman and tell him we're done blowing him up."

* * *

"Glad to hear it, hedgehog," Eggman growled during the call. "You blew off my communications array and most of my east tower!"

"Yeah, I know," Sonic said. "We got everybody back, so we're leaving. Kidnap any of us again, and there's more where that came from."

"I didn't kidnap anyone!" Eggman retorted. "Gladiolus came to GUN for treatment. It's not my fault they wanted to keep her."

"Oh yeah? What about me?" Sonic shot back. "They drugged me, Eggman. And my friends."

Eggman held up both hands. "Again, not my fault. I rented GUN the real estate. That's it."

He glanced at one of his screens. It showed a camera view of the north wing, where water was pouring out of a huge hole in one wall. As he watched, the roof was torn open from the inside. A human with flailing robotic octopus limbs crawled out.

"And they've not been good tenants," Eggman muttered. "Fine, I agree to cease fire. But you might have robots on your doorstep tomorrow."

"Fine," Sonic said. "I'm out." He cut the connection.

Eggman pressed a button. "Hazard! Status?"

"Chaos has attacked and wounded both men, sir," the robot replied. "Dr. Gerald escaped down the cliff. Dr. Lewis has just moved to the roof."

"And you?"

"I am on the roof of your base, Doctor. I know better than to face a water monster."

Eggman chuckled. "You're functioning beautifully, Hazard. Standby. If Chaos doesn't get Lewis, I suppose I'll have to rescue the old bag."

A tentacle made of water flowed up through the hole in the roof, wrapped around Lewis, and dragged him back inside.

"Never mind," Eggman said.


	16. Chapter 16

When Shadow crashed on Angel Island, Metal Sonic knew exactly where he was.

Rigel, the gold hedgehog, had gone to sleep in the crew bunker, worn out from being kidnapped and kicked around in the lab. But she awoke to find the robot's cold metal hand shaking her.

Rigel sat up with a gasp, thinking it was Hazard. But no, this robot was smaller and sleeker, more dangerous-looking. It beckoned.

"Are you a good guy?" she whispered.

Metal Sonic nodded, then pointed at the door.

"You want me to follow you?"

Another nod.

Rigel wasn't inclined to follow this robot anywhere, but he kept urgently pointing at the door. Without a headset, she couldn't hear him speak. Hesitantly, she pulled on her shoes and followed him.

Metal Sonic led her back to the main hall and up the stairs to the west door. Rigel grew more apprehensive as they stepped outside into the pitch-dark ravine. "I can't see anything, robot. Why are we out here?"

He switched the red filter off his eyes. They glowed like headlights, illuminating the ground at her feet. Rigel stepped into the light, wondering what in the world she was doing. This robot might be leading her out into the woods to kill her far from help. Her crippled hand felt like more of a liability than usual.

But Rigel followed him, up the ravine, over its edge into the jungle, and into a rocky, grassy spot with no trees. Metal Sonic illuminated a black figure sprawled on the ground.

Rigel gasped. "Shadow!"

The hedgehog lay on his belly, limbs splayed, his spines crumpled-looking. He had hit a rock with his head, a smear of blood marking the spot. The green chaos emerald still glowed in his fist, and four golden rings were scattered around him.

Rigel felt for a pulse. As she fumbled around, Metal Sonic laid a hand on the hedgehog's head.

"How did this happen?" Rigel demanded. "Who hurt him? He had to have been in a battle to be so hurt."

The robot shrugged.

Shadow's heart was beating. Rigel sat beside him and stroked his spines. "Poor Shadow. All the bad things happen to you."

She was interrupted by a flash and explosion as the ARK cannon shot a missile out of the air. Shadow awoke with a gasp and sat up, looking wildly around.

"It's okay," Rigel said. "That was our side."

Shadow looked around at Rigel and Metal Sonic. "Where am I? What happened?"

"You're on Angel Island," Rigel said. "This robot led me here, but he doesn't say anything."

Shadow sat there for a moment, watching the debris cloud from the exploding missile fade into darkness. Then he seemed to wake up and scrambled around, collecting his gold bands. He snapped them onto his wrists and ankles, then sat down with a relieved sigh.

Metal Sonic approached and made a complicated hand gesture.

"Fine, whatever," Shadow said.

The robot placed his hand on Shadow's head. A triangle shape burned into the metal palm began to glow green.

"What's he doing to you?" Rigel asked.

"Healing," Shadow replied. "Sorry you got dragged into this. I'll take you home in the morning."

Rigel looked around at the dark trees and the sky strewn with stars. "You live here now?"

"Yes."

"I thought you lived on Bygone Island."

Shadow shrugged. "Maria is here. So I am, too."

"Maria!" Rigel exclaimed. "She's awake? Is she all right?"

Shadow smiled a little-a bitter smile. "She's been turned into an avatar of the Master Emerald. You know, the big chaos crystal they were using to heal her. Their essence mingled. She doesn't need me anymore."

"But you need her," Rigel observed.

"I don't need anyone," Shadow snarled. "I'm a chaos wizard now. I have power and knowledge to keep me company." His red spines began to glow.

Rigel tilted her head to one side and gazed at him in silence.

"Well, look at me!" Shadow exclaimed. "I have a chaos emerald in my skin. I'm capable of destroying anything I want. Nothing can stand in my way."

"And there's a robot healing you," Rigel pointed out.

Shadow folded his arms and grunted. Metal Sonic withdrew his hand and stepped back to a respectful distance. The gash on Shadow's head had disappeared, the black fur whole once more.

"I know you're powerful," Rigel said in a low voice. "I saw it that night when my arm was caught in the ropes and I was drowning. You freed me with chaos control-like it was nothing. But it was everything to me."

Shadow shrugged and said nothing.

Rigel shrugged and laughed a little. "I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Maybe this. It's okay to be a wizard. But it's okay to be Shadow, too."

"I don't know who Shadow is," he muttered.

"Shadow is the hedgehog who cared enough to rescue a toddler from a flooded lab," Rigel said. "Shadow cared enough to bring me presents on my birthday every year for decades. Shadow rescued me on that crab boat. It's okay to be that Shadow."

He smiled-a warmer, honest smile. "I suppose I could be him. Come on. Let's get inside before somebody shoots at us again."

* * *

 

Gladiolus didn't wake up until noon the following day. When she did, she was sick with thirst. The black crystals were bigger and had spread down her back. Lying in the bunk had grown too uncomfortable, and it dragged her out of sleep.

It took her a while to remember where she was. It wasn't home ... it wasn't the hospital-lab ...oh yes, it was Angel Island. She lay there, gazing at the bunk above hers, feeling the dryness in her throat and thinking about Knuckles and Maria. Specifically, Maria's warning that Glad couldn't come back until the curse was broken. What if she harmed everyone just by getting up to get a drink?

Yet she was so thirsty. Finally, shaking a little, she got up and crept to the restroom to drink out of the trickling stream over the wash basin. Her shoulders and arms were so sore, she could hardly bring her hands to her mouth.

Glad was creeping back to the girls' bunker, supporting herself against the wall, when Knuckles entered the passage. "Hey, Glad!"

She stopped, unable to keep herself from smiling. "Hello, Knuckles."

"You look terrible," he said, slipping a hand under her elbow. "Come down to the galley. Tails is doing hot sandwiches."

Glad's stomach growled. "That sounds great. Do I really look terrible?" She touched the tiny crystals growing around her eyes.

"I meant you look tired," Knuckles said gently. "The crystals will go away soon."

"How soon can we do it?" she asked. "Get married, I mean."

"I've been hauling furniture since this morning," Knuckles said. "Hopefully we can do the ceremony tomorrow. I can show you after lunch, if you like. Our place is amazing."

Our place. It made Glad excited and terribly anxious all at once. "I don't even know what to expect. You know. Being married."

"Apparently," Knuckles said, "it's like having your best friend sleep over every night."

Glad laughed. It felt good to laugh. Anxiety had plagued her for so long, she barely remembered how happiness felt.

"What about Maria?" she asked, sobering. "You said she couldn't stand having me around."

"I talked her into putting up with you for a few days," Knuckles said. "I threatened to pitch the Master Emerald into the sea if she didn't."

Glad blinked at him. "Did you really?"

Knuckles grinned ruefully. "I threatened to. I don't know if I could, but it scared Maria. I guess I'm pretty convincing."

Warmed by this, Glad accompanied him to the galley, where the rest of the crew greeted her with shouts and high-fives. She helped herself to three grilled ham sandwiches, devoured them, and felt marvelously better afterward.

When she noticed Sonic staring at her, she said, "I know how I look. It feels pretty bad, too."

"Dude," Sonic said. "Glad, can you, like, chaos control with your own crystal? Because you've got quite the crop."

"I don't know." She thought of summoning the wind while gliding. Had the crystals been the reason she could do it? What a strange thought.

After lunch, Knuckles showed her the secret door that led to the crew apartments. Delighted, she followed him up the stairs, looked out the old window with the ripply glass, then went down the hall to the biggest apartment.

Apparently Knuckles, having little interior design sense, had appealed to Amy for advice. The rooms were lavishly furnished with wood furniture. Colorful rugs softened the stone floors, and everything was arranged to accommodate the flow of light from the deep windows.

Glad stood in the middle of the floor, gazing at the splendor, overcome. "But ... how could you afford all this?"

"Well, none of it is new," Knuckles said, settling into a sofa and propping his feet on a nearby coffee table. "Amy treats estate sales as a sport. Salvage from the Fellstorm paid for everything. What do you think?"

Glad sat beside him and burst into tears. "I've never had so many nice things in my life!"

Knuckles wrapped his arms around her, gratified and a little embarrassed. She sobbed into his shoulder. He stroked her long dreadlocks and wondered why he felt so deeply contented. Maybe this was how a guy was supposed to feel when he had made his fiancé happy.

Glad's tears subsided. She cuddled against him and sat there for a while, gazing around the room and stroking the white crescent on his chest.

"I'll need to go home and get my things," she said after a while. "Mom and Aunt Hyacinth are going to lose their minds."

"I'll go with you," Knuckles said, steeling his nerve. "I'll run interference while you pack. I'm sure they'll throw things, call the cops, all that fun stuff."

"Bring the chaos emerald," Glad whispered. "We can just chaos control out of there."

Knuckles laughed at the thought. "Imagine their faces when I pull out this sixteen-hundred carat emerald and wave it around."

"They might reconsider, actually," Glad said. "If they think you're rich."

Knuckles leaned his head against the cushion and smiled at the ceiling. "We are rich. We may not have a lot of money, but we have a great place to live, food to eat, and tons of undeveloped real estate. Someday, I want there to be a town here. And farms. And people." He hugged her and kissed her temple, just above the crystals. "And you. If all I had was you, I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams."

Hesitantly, she kissed his cheek. "I think ... I could get used to it. I've been so careful all my life ... cursed and half-blind and everything ... I can't seem to believe that this is real. That I'm not going to die."

His arm tightened around her. "No, you're not. I'm going to make sure of that."

* * *

 

The next day, about noon, Glad knocked on the door of her mother's house in Pilings. Knuckles stood beside her, smiling a little. Sonic had tagged along and was concealed in the trees nearby. He'd wanted to see the fireworks.

Poppy opened the door and stared at them. Her thin, stringy frame seemed to turn even thinner. "Glad!" she shrieked. "What's happened to you?"

Glad barely glanced at the black crystal on her arms. "Oh, the curse got worse. Do you mind if I get my things?"

Poppy stood aside, gaping at her daughter. Knuckles followed Glad inside without waiting for an invitation.

Hyacinth, sitting in her usual chair, screamed. "Gladiolus! What is that all over you?"

"Crystal," Glad said absently, looking around the room. "I'll just be a minute." She went to her room and began gathering her belongings.

With Glad out of sight, the two turned on Knuckles. "You filthy moon echidna!" Hyacinth shrieked, face reddening. "It's your sorcery that did this!"

Knuckles shrugged. "It wasn't me." He seemed unaffected by their fury, arms folded, relaxed. His very coolness infuriated them.

"She was fine when she left!" Poppy cried. "Only a headache! Now she's completely disfigured!" She tugged at her own dreadlocks the way Glad did when distressed.

"It'll go away," Knuckles said.

"Go away!" Poppy screamed. "Her skin has turned to crystal! How is she still alive?"

Knuckles smirked. "Sorcery."

"I knew it!" Hyacinth wailed. "He put some kind of evil spell on her!"

"You waited until she was in the hospital, didn't you?" Poppy snarled. "You worked your magic when she couldn't defend herself!"

Knuckles gave her a puzzled look. "She wasn't in the hospital. Didn't you know?"

Hyacinth and Poppy exchanged a quick glance. "She was at the hospital in Bygone Village," Poppy said, but her voice was uncertain. "We were going to visit her today, but-"

"They took her to Eggman," Knuckles said. "You seriously didn't know? Didn't you care enough to find out where that creepy scientist was taking her?"

He'd poked their guilt. Both echidnas flushed. "How dare you say that!" Poppy screeched. "I'm an excellent mother, you disgusting moon scum! Now she's covered in disease and it's your fault! Why is she getting her things? What lies have you told her?"

"We got married this morning," Knuckles said.

Dead silence greeted this announcement. Both echidnas stared at him, mouths hanging open.

Before they could throw furniture at him, Knuckles tossed the chaos emerald in the air and caught it. It glittered wealthily as it flew, throwing sparks of green light across the dismal room. Poppy and Hyacinth's eyes followed it.

"What is that?" Poppy whispered.

"An emerald," Knuckles said. "Glad, do you need help?"

"Almost done," she called back.

Knuckles beamed at Poppy and Hyacinth. "Sorry I didn't have a chance to ask you for her, first. This was the only way to break her curse, and time was running out."

He could tell by their faces that they didn't understand a word of this, and he didn't care. He flipped the emerald in the air again. Their eyes followed it like dogs watching a steak.

"So," he added, "I guess it's a little late to ask for permission. But I'd appreciate it if you gave us your blessing."

"You have a lot of those?" Poppy said, her voice almost conversational.

"Only one more," Knuckles said, "but it's a lot bigger."

Further silence greeted this statement. The pair seemed to be trying to overcome a lifetime of hatred of moon echidnas very quickly.

Poppy choked, "Why-why, of course. You have permission to-to marry her."

Hyacinth's face was purple with the effort of restraining her rage. "So ... where will you be living?"

"The palace on Angel Island." Their eyes popped at the mention of a palace. Knuckles enjoyed it. "Got a nice little place fixed up. It's only about three thousand square feet. Got the inside professionally decorated."

Sonic was looking in the kitchen window, both hands over his mouth to hold in his laughter. Knuckles couldn't look at him or he would laugh, too.

Glad reappeared, lugging a bulging backpack and a duffle bag. Knuckles took both and slung them over one shoulder. "Ready to go?"

"Just a minute." Glad hugged her aunt, then her mother. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but there wasn't time. I was being held prisoner on Eggman's island, and Knuckles rescued me. We'll have a big wedding party next month, okay?"

Poppy and Hyacinth followed them to the door, demanding to know more. Their guilt at not having known she was in danger hung around them like a cloud.

Knuckles saw Glad being slowed by the inertia of family, and opened the door to usher her out. He kept her moving all the way down the path, pursued by her mother and aunt. When the reached the edge of the trees, Sonic stepped out and waved. "See you guys later!"

Knuckles chaos-controlled them back to the main hall on Angel Island, where he and Sonic fell over each other, laughing.

"I was so scared!" Glad exclaimed. "How can you guys laugh?"

"Their faces!" Knuckles said, wiping his eyes. "When they started trying to be nice to me!"

"You should have seen your aunt," Sonic laughed. "She grabbed this big paperweight thing, and I swear she was going to bounce it off Knux's skull. Then he flashed the emerald and she forgot everything else."

"You know, Glad," Knuckles said, "I think they might start to like me now."

Glad wrapped an arm around him and hid her face against his chest. "I'm just happy they didn't murder you."

"It was touch and go for a few minutes," Knuckles said. "Come on, let's get you unpacked."

Glad took his hand, smiling, and the two went to their rooms.

* * *

 

"Well, it's the seventh day," Knuckles said a few days later. "Or the end of it."

He and Gladiolus sat in a big chair that was pulled up to one of the windows in their apartment. The sun was setting outside in a fiery nest of clouds, the colors changing from gold to red to violet.

Glad sat sideways in the chair, so the crystals covering her body wouldn't scratch him. Their growth had continued down her back and legs, so sitting or lying down had become acutely painful. She barely resembled an echidna anymore-she was a sad, crusted black thing with long dreadlocks. Knuckles stroked her hair and face, touching the crystal without fear.

"I thought it would stop growing," Glad said, flexing one hand, which had developed crystalline claws. "We did what Chaos wanted. We're married. Why am I getting worse?"

"If it hasn't reversed by tomorrow," Knuckles said, "I'll have a word with Chaos."

"Knux," Glad said, very quietly. "Tomorrow, I'm supposed to die of the curse."

"You won't die," he said, taking her crystallized hand. "We did it. Here you are." But his voice wavered with doubt. "You're going to be fine."

Glad stroked his face with the bit of fingertips she had left. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. Chaos must really hate me. Bury me near the waterfall, up by the ravine. It's such a pretty spot."

Knuckles closed his eyes and his lips compressed. "Don't talk like that."

Glad rested her hands in her lap and sighed. "I might get well tomorrow. Or I might not. I never wanted this for you ... to make you grieve."

"Glad," he whispered, wrapping an arm around her, "it was worth it." He kissed her tenderly, stroking her hair, the only soft part of her left.

She kissed him back, wishing she could ignore the growing pain, the weight of the thickening stone. He still held out hope, but she had quietly given up. Not with the curse so obviously active. Chaos had broken his promise, or maybe he was too vindictive to release her. Either way, she planned to die in Knuckles's arms. At least the last thing she would see would be his face. If only it didn't have to hurt so much.

They went to bed a little later. He fell asleep long before she did. Glad lay there, listening to him breathe, feeling the prickling of a thousand stabbing, growing crystals. It would grow worse and worse until the final pain took her life. She had always expected to die of a headache. This way seemed so unfair. Nothing could have prepared her for this slow-motion stabbing.

Eventually, despite the pain, she dozed.

She thought she was standing on the beach outside Pilings. Her stone-covered skin could no longer feel the breeze, but the ocean was cold as it curled around her ankles.

As she stood there, a chao came bobbing to the shore, floating like a cork on the little waves.

"Hello!" she said. "Are you the one the scientists hurt?"

"I'm fine now," the chao said in its baby voice. It splashed to her feet and held up its arms. Glad picked it up, trying not to poke it with her crystal claws. Mostly, she failed, but the chao didn't protest.

The chao rubbed a damp paw on Glad's crystallized arm. "You were kind to us chao. Not afraid. The others were afraid."

"I should have been," Glad said. "But chao don't look scary. And really, I was in so much trouble, you were the least of my worries."

The chao looked up at her, far too innocent for an extension of Chaos. It was connected to him. She could talk to it in a way she couldn't speak to the dragon.

"Why hasn't the curse stopped?" she asked it. "What did we do wrong?"

"Wrong?" the chao said. "You did nothing wrong. I told the Guardian seven days, and seven it has been."

The chao's paw began to blacken as it rubbed the crystal. Shards broke off and fell into the water. Glad's own red fur began to reappear in patches. She stared, hardly daring to breathe, wondering if it was real.

"I always honor bargains," the chao said in a suggestion of Chaos's huge voice. "You overcame your fear. Knuckles overcame the limits I placed upon him. You are removed from the curse upon Solaris."

The black crystal chipped away in greater and greater amounts. The chao lifted its soft face to Gladiolus, raising one paw to her blind eye. "And this." The paw touched her eyelid. "Let it heal. Let it retain the sight it has gained. Let no more pain afflict you."

"Thank you," Glad whispered. "I was afraid that I was going to die anyway. Even after ... after everything."

"I honor my bargains," the chao insisted. "You echidnas played a dangerous game, but you won by a narrow margin. Few can say the same."

"I didn't mean to," Glad replied. "It just happened that way."

"Yes," the chao purred. "Now, go with my blessing. Water will cleanse the rest."

* * *

 

Knuckles awoke with a surge of guilt. Daylight streamed in the windows. He had meant to wake up, watch over Glad, make sure she survived the night. Instead, he had slept like a log, worn out from the prolonged anguish of seeing Glad turning to stone.

He rolled over and looked at her. She lay half-curled in an uncomfortable position, eyes closed. Was she breathing? He couldn't tell. He touched her crystal-covered face. "Glad?"

Her eyes opened. The blind one had lost its redness, and only the pupil remained cloudy.

"You made it," he whispered, and kissed her.

She smiled. The crystal covering her face cracked and crumbled into the sheets. Knuckles sat up. "Glad! It's coming off!"

She sat up, pulling off crystal in slabs. It fell off her face, neck, arms, everywhere. "Chaos spoke to me in a dream. He said he always honors bargains."

"I guess he did," Knuckles said, not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. His wife was emerging from the stone like a butterfly from a chrysalis, beautiful and perfect. He'd been so afraid of having to hold her funeral today, and instead ...

Glad climbed out of bed. Broken crystal scattered across the floor. "I'm making such a mess. Look at this! It looks like someone dumped a bucket of gravel in here. Chaos said that water would cleanse the rest. Should I take a bath?"

"Go ahead," Knuckles said. "I'll sweep up." He took a moment to wrap his arms around her and hold her without being scratched or poked.

She hugged him, too, holding back tears. "It's over, Knux. My curse is broken."

"You bet it is," Knuckles said. "We'll get you cleaned up and show you off to the others."

She wiped her eyes and smiled. "They'll finally stop being freaked out around me. And my eye!" She covered her good eye and turned in a circle, looking around with her chaos eye. "I can see light and shadow again! And chaos auras. It's not perfect, but I've got some vision back!"

Knuckles laughed. He chuckled the whole time he was sweeping up and shaking out blankets. When Glad emerged from the bathroom, freshly groomed and crystal-free, he was still chuckling. It was like his happiness had to come out somehow.

"Let's go down to breakfast," he said, offering her his arm.

She took it, smiling. "And then we can get down to the business of living."

The end


End file.
